









JOAN THE MAID, 


DELIVERER OF 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 

' A STORY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, 


DONE INTO MODERN ENGLISH, 


BY THE AUTHOR OF 


CHRONICLES OF THE SCHONBERG COTTA FAMILY. 



NEW YORK: 


DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, 


Publishers. 


TBANSFBE 
Bi o. PUBLIC 
SBPT. lO, 1040 


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CONTENTS. 


[CHAPTER I. 

rAGB 


Percival’s Story 7 

CHAPTER II. 

Elaine’s Story 41 . 

CHAPTER III. 

Peter the Wright’s Story 50 

CHAPTER IV. 

Percival’s Story 63 

^ CHAPTER V. 

Elaine’s Story 68 

CHAPTER VI. 

Percival’s Story 74 

CHAPTER VII. 

Percival’s Story. Contintied . 121 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Peter the Wright’s Story 145 

CHAPTER IX. 

Percival’s Story. 157 


6 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER X. fAG* 

Percival’s Story. Continued. 177 

CHAPTER XI. 

Elaine’s Story 193 

CHAPTER XII. 

Percival’s Story 203 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Percival’s Story. Continued 225 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Percival’s Story. Continued. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Percival’s Story. Continued 17a 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Percival’s Story. Continued 28a 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Percival’s Story. Continued 291 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Percival’s Story. Continued . 314 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Percival’s Story. Continued ... 330 

CHAPTER XX. 

Percival’s Story. Continued 34a 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Percival’s Story Concluded 347 


JOAN THE MAID. 


CHAPTER I. 
percival’s story. 

WITCH ! Joan, the Maid, a witch ! No 



•TjL more a witch than St. Catharine and all the 
blessed saints who talked with her as with a fel- 
low-citizen of the Golden City, whither men sent 
her long ago. 

Deluded ! No more deluded than all the good- 
ly fellowship of the martyrs who were counted 
mad by the deluded earth-seekers of their own 
day. 

I have seen her flashing, like Michael the 
Archangel, in her white array, before Orleans. I 
have seen her shed tears when she was wounded, 
like any other tender girl, yet through all the 
pain lead the army on. Some of us have seen 
her weep over the English wounded, and sustain 
the dying in her arms. Afterwards, betrayed 
and delivered to her enemies, I have seen her 


8 


70AN THE MAID. 


shrink from suffering and yet vanquish torture, 
succoring and saving others even in the flames. 

And I am as sure she was sent of God as that 
I breathe. Sent to rescue torn and bleeding 
France, sent to turn our England back from 
pillage and rapine, from the false quest she 
was on, to her true work and warfare among the 
nations. 

I am as certain as that the sun is in the heav- 
ens, that she was given to these poor, bewildered, 
barren days of ours, to be to us as an image of 
the Christ ; King, Deliverer, Sufferer, Saviour of 
men ; Saviour, not of England or of France, but 
of all men ; to lift up before us once more the 
likeness of what He was and is, who gave not 
His substance only, but Himself for us ; the like- 
ness of what each of us in high or humble place 
is called to be. 

Is it strange that I call this warrior-maiden 
a likeness of Christ, of Him who would neither 
strive nor cry, who said, Agenstonde not an 
evil man, but if ony man smyte thee on the ryte 
cheek, turn to him the tother ; to hym that will 
strive with thee in doom, and take away thy 
coote, leve thou to hym also thi mantle ?” 

Yet I say it with full purpose, from the depths 
of my soul. The longer I live, the more I learn 
that there is but one likeness of the Christ in hu- 
man hearts ; the love to God and man which 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


9 


leads us to lay down life for the brethreri, foi the 
world. 

Jeanne, the Maid, laid down her life for her 
land in living, and laid it down in dying. And 
it is this, in mother, maid, monk, father, priest 
or king, which is like the King — her King and 
ours. 

Not enjoyment of His blessed sacraments, 
not raptures of prayer ; these may be little more 
than the body’s delight in its dainties, in a fresh 
air on the cheek, or a sweet smell in the gar- 
dens ; but love, the life which lives in others, 
and if death comes in such service, takes it as 
naturally and unhesitatingly as any other step of 
the Way of the Cross ; this is the true imitation 
of Christ, this is the Christ Himself living in 
men. 

It is good to go over again the story of the 
Maid, the glorious, sorrowful, sacred story, as it 
was interwoven with my own, and as I searched 
it out from friend and foe. 

I go back to the old days, the childhood by 
the Western sea, the sea whose shore no man 
knows, nor even if it has a shore. 

The salt of its spray seems on my old with- 
ered cheeks as I speak, the sound of its waves is 
in my ears, waves that begin no one knows 
where, and break on the white shingles and the 
pitiless rocks like an echo of eternity. 


10 


yOAN- THE MAID, 


It was no friendly lapping water to be played 
with, that sea by the old seat of Arthur the King, 
along the thundering shores of Tintagel. 

Death was in it, and peril, and power to de- 
stroy lurked in every one of those breakers 
which dashed like war-horses against the rocks, 
or leaped like reined-in chargers over on the 
great sands. 

We knew it when we bathed in them as boys, 
my brother Owen and I. 

They seethed up through bottomless holes to 
the top of the wild cliffs, they sent their spray 
miles inland ; and the winds that lashed and en- 
raged them levelled the tops of the mighty oaks 
as even as a meadow of cropped grass. 

As a battle-field sea and land seemed to me 
then ; as a battle-field life has been to me. 

And I had rather it were so, though I may be 
twisted and gnarled, and cropped like those 
aged wrestling oaks, than grow up smooth and 
even in some inland valley of the world. 

For the fighting has to be done by some one, 
and I had rather it should be by me for all I can, 
than for me by any. 

The stirring of the blood in the battles is 
better than any joys of sloth. And in all the 
battles of the Christ some evil ones are slain and 
some oppressed ones of the devil are rescued and 
set free. 


FERCIVAVS STORY. 


II 


Not by blowing trumpets, in these days, and 
marching round walls ever so many times do the 
strongholds of the enemy fall, within or without 
but by blows and wounds, and shedding of life- 
blood. 

Wherefore it is good, I deem, to begin the 
training early, for none can win the field for an- 
other, alas ! nor can any lose the battle for us 
but ourselves. 

Alas, yes, alas ! for all do not win ; and it is 
hard to stand by and see the day lost by those 
we would give life to make conquerors, and to 
know why they lose, and to tell them how to 
win, and yet be able to succor them no whit, 
save in some poor feminine afterwork of binding 
up wounds ; and often not even that. 

Yes, harder than anything in the world. 

Does the Lord Christ know how hard ? 

Ah, indeed ! does He not? He who said in 
words which weep through the ages, “ Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, how often would I, and thou wouldst 
not !" 

Yet, in that old stronghold of ours, of the Tre- 
velyans by the Western seas, rugged outside as 
the rocks it seemed part of, there was for a while 
a warm nest tapestried as with down from a 
mother-bird’s wing. 

It is good to think that the rudest stronghold 
that bristles defiance from its heights, and the 


12 


yOAN THE MAID. 


poorest cabin that crouches defenceless below 
have all been that to some little human creatures 
in their day — a fortress and a nest. 

The tiniest wren’s wings seem a mighty shield 
to her nestlings ; the fiercest lioness’s roar is as 
a tender cooing to her whelps. 

And in our old castle by the sea we had lion- 
hearted courage to defend us, and wings as soft 
as any dove’s to nestle under, we three — I, Per- 
cival the eldest, Owen the second, and our little 
sister Elaine. 

Our mother was French, and our father won 
her on this wise : 

In the early days of this century no English 
coast was safe. The French landed at Fal- 
mouth, and at Haverford-West in Wales, sum- 
moned to his aid by the Welsh Prince, Owen 
Glendower. The Flemings and Easterlings were 
ever cruising round our shores, and pouncing on 
some undefended village or town. And we were 
not behindhand in reprbals, we to whom the sea 
was no accident, but the very element and safe- 
guard of our existence. Sometimes we had let- 
ters of marque from the king. Sometimes we 
had none, and did as well without 

Close to our castle was a little harbor, ap- 
proached by a winding creek, between precipi- 
tous rocks. Once reached, this creek was secure 
from all winds, but woe worth the hapless for- 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


n 


eigner who thought to penetrate it unpiloted. 
This little fishing-port, bristling to our foes with 
fortifications such as no human hands could rear, 
determined in a measure the character of our 
family holding. 

It was the only harbor along all that range 
of rugged coast which breasts the sea without a 
.shore. Without, absolutely inaccessible, and, 
indeed, invisible to any stranger ; within, land- 
locked as a natural dock and basin. Beyond it 
stretched a curve of wild rocky coast ; and if any 
hapless vessel were seen in certain winds within 
the arc of that curve, within a line which was as 
the string to that fatal bow, every man and wo- 
man on the land knew she was hopelessly 
doomed ; the wreckers made ready for their 
prey, and pious souls began their prayers, as for 
souls already in purgatory. 

The protection of this haven made our fore- 
fathers masters of two elements. The elder sons 
lords of the little wooded valley, the miles of 
mountain pasture, and the few fields of thin corn, 
sprinkled with peasants’ huts ; the younger 
ploughing the sea, and reaping their harvests in 
other men’s sowing, finding the salt waters them- 
selves no barren waste, and oftentimes making 
raids on our neighbors’ coasts. 

In one of these expeditions our father, com- 
bining with some larger craft from Falmouth 


14 


yOAJ\r THE MAID. 


(then smarting from a recent plundering expedi- 
tion equipped by the Duke of Orleans), descend- 
ed on the shores of Brittany, and sacked and 
burned the little town on the coast where my 
mother dwelt. 

My father came up to the threshold of her 
house just as an old man fell down on it, slain 
by the men-at-arms and sailors from his own 
ship. They rushed into the house to plunder. 
It was a fair house. To us, from our mother’s 
descriptions, it stood as an image of all the 
princely dwellings in the Round Table histories, 
which were the romances of our childhood, or of 
the palaces in the tales of Chaucer. 

There were carven chests and tables and 
chairs, and Venice glasses and tapestries and em- 
broideries, and goodly furnishings and paintings 
— different, indeed, from the bare stone walls and 
rude benches and boards of our castle. 

But tapestries and carvings were little to our 
seamen ; they wanted silver and gold and jewels, 
and such obvious treasures as can be carried 
away swiftly in small vessels from a burnt and 
ruined town. 

Through room after room they hurried, seek- 
ing the owners, who might tell them where their 
treasures were hidden, or buy their lives off with 
a ransom. But room after room was empty, 
until, in a closet in a small tower, inside the 


PEI^CIVAVS STORY. 


15 

great bed-chamber, they found a young maid 
alone, clad in broidered silk and samite, my fa- 
ther said, like Queen Guinevere, and kneeling 
before a great wooden crucifix as large as life, 
cunningly carved in wood, with the arms 
stretched wide to embrace the world, and the 
head bowed, not so much as if in weakness as if 
majestically yielding up the Ghost to God for 
man. 

She was kneeling there. She did not rise 
when they burst open the door, but drew close 
to the crucifix and clasped the nailed feet in her 
arms, appealing with her eyes, not to the soldiers, 
but to the Love imaged there. 

The men drew back, and some crossed them- 
selves. The image was sacred to them as to her. 
And some of them doubtless had in their hearts 
some memory which made the hapless suppliant 
maid sacred to them, at least for the moment, as 
if she had been the Blessed Maiden Mother her- 
self. 

My father was a knight sworn to defend 
women and children ; and she, in her orphaned 
youth, was both. His purpose was formed, ac- 
cording to his wont, in a moment. Turning to 
his men, he said, — 

“ You know me. You can trust me. I claim 
this house, and all in it, as my share of the booty 
I will arrange the ransom, and see that each of 


i6 


yOAN THE MAID. 


you has his share. Go ye elsewhere, and take 
what booty ye can. Lose no more time here, 
for whatever time ye spend here is lost. Ye 
know well none of you ever fell short of his due 
by trusting me. And,” he added, with a flash 
of the eyes his men knew, “ none ever lost his 
due for disobeying me.” 

And as they turned away my father added, — 
I choose to defend this maiden by my 
knightly duty as my own sister.” 

Whereon Peter the Wright, who told us, cried, 
What our lord defends, we defend !” 

And with a ringing Cornish cheer which 
blanched our mother’s cheek, the marauding 
party made off, leaving my father alone with the 
maiden. 

Then, as he often told us, the most difncult 
part of his task began. For, alone with her, a 
sudden abashment and awe came over him, and 
his French, moreover, not being fluent, he knew 
not what to say. Besides, the thought of the 
old man he believed to be her father lying dead 
on the threshold struck him dumb. 

At length, after a few moments’ pause, he 
knelt down before the crucifix and crossed him- 
self, and said, — 

“ Fair dame, thou art in sanctuary here. Is 
there any refuge to which I could take thee? By 
Saint Mary, I will do it at the peril of my life, 


PERCIVALS STORY. 


17 


Hast thou kindred at hand?** For he still 
thought the blood of the slain lay for ever as a 
great gulf, never to be bridged over, between her. 
and him. 

She rose, and casting down her eyes, said, in 
a tone of hopeless resignation, — 

“ I have no kindred. I have been fatherless 
and motherless from childhood. My uncle rode 
off from the house this morning, when your ships 
appeared in the offing, to get succor.’* 

“ Who was it then whom our men slew at 
your door?” 

It must have been the Sieur Trisserot, my 
uncle’s partner. He wanted me to fly with him, 
and I chose rather to remain here and die, if so 
it pleased the saints.** 

The Sieur Trisserot was not thy friend, 
then ?” said my father, infinitely relieved, and 
venturing to raise his eyes to the maiden’s face. 

** My uncle would have had me be his be- 
trothed,” she said frankly, “ and I willed it 
not.” 

“ Then, perchance, thou art vowed to a more 
sacred bridal ?” he replied. 

“ I have vowed nothing,” she replied, the pal- 
lid hue natural to her slightly changing. Father 
Gregory said it was not a vocation to the religious 
life to hate any one man as. Heaven forgive me, 

I hated the Sieur Trisserot.” 


i8 


yOAN THE MAID. 


Thou wouldst not, then, that I took thee ta 
a convent ?” 

“ There is none near,'' she said. “Take me 
rather to good Mother Margot's, in the street by 
the church." 

“ The street by the church is in flames," he 
said. 

At that moment a tumult of rough voices 
reached them ; rough and uncertain voices, as in 
drunken revel. Unconsciously she crept nearer 
him for protection. There was no time for hesi- 
tation. 

“ Maiden," he said, “ we know nothing of 
each other but our voices and our faces ; but I 
would trust thine to the end of the world. If 
thou canst trust me, I will seek the priest who is 
with our ships, and we will be wed. So only can 
I have right and might to guard thee. And if 
on reaching our coast thou wiliest otherwise, I 
swear by St. Mary thou shalt have refuge and 
welcome in the fairest nunnery I can find in Eng- 
land or France." 

She did not refuse ; and in that wild way our 
father won his bride, as true and gentle a lady 
as any who ever trod the halls of Camelot or 
Tintagel when the Round Table was at its best. 

There was little time to spare. 

The wedding-mass was hastily said. 

Our mother scrupulously refused to carry off 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


19 


any of her uncle’s property. The men-at-arms, 
therefore, made free with whatever costly stuffs 
and silver equipage they could find ; but to our 
share came only the few jewels she wore, the 
wooden crucifix at the foot of which she had 
knelt, and an Italian picture of the Holy Family 
by a Florentine painter whom our mother used 
to call the Angelical Brother, of color delicate 
and dainty as young leaves and flowers in spring, 
and with faces innocent and glad as those which 
shine on happy children in their dreams. 

And these remained the great teachers and 
treasures of our childhood. 

Whatever they might have been among the 
rich marbles and mosaics of crowded Italian 
churches, they were more, I think, on the bare 
walls of our rude old Cornish castle, binding three 
young souls to the sacred facts of the gospel 
story, and letting in on them the day-spring of 
beauty which had dawned on the sunny south. 

Our old stronghold must have seemed little 
better than a robber’s den to our mother. 

Carpet and tapestry were unknown in it when 
she came. Silk and samite there were none, save 
in the drapery of the old oaken state bed which 
our grandmother had brought at her bridal ; and 
of fine linen there was little, save such as had 
been stored in our grandmother’s great wedding 
chest, the finest whereof soon went into small 


20 


yOAN' THE MAID. 


garments to wrap her first-born in, me, Percival 
Trevelyan, the eldest of her three children. 

But our mother had little liking for luxury, 
and withal a love of all beauty, which made every 
sunbeam a jewel for her, and every wild flower 
or sea-shell precious as a broidered tapestry or 
chased chalice. Is it the glamour of an old man’s 
memory, or was it the actual world she created 
by her presence ? I always think of the rooms 
in which she dwelt as enriched with purple and 
broidered work, and fragrant with fresh flower 
scents ; and of every ramble with her on cliff or 
beach as if it had been shone on by the sun of 
the south. 

She had doubtless a fine skill with her needle, 
which she taught to our little sister Elaine ; and, 
in her hands, unbleached linen, or flannel woven 
from the wool of our own sheep, and broidered 
with such dyes as we could make, seemed, to our 
eyes, to drape the walls and windows as with 
creamy velvets. 

Till I die, the picture of the chamber which 
was her own, with the crimson draperies of our 
grandmother’s bed, and the broidered hangings 
by door and window ; the logs blazing on the 
hearth, and reflected on the oaken floor she 
taught the maids to polish ; the sheep-skin and 
wolf-skin mats strewed here and there ; and in 
the deep recess of the window the solemn crucifix 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


21 


and the tender painting of “ The Mother and the 
Child,” will always be to me a heart’s nest of 
rest and warmth, furry and feathery, and warm 
and soft, just as I suppose down, and plumelets, 
and tufts of dry grass, and bits of straw seem to 
other nestlings. 

She was indeed a song-bird and a nest-build- 
er, her lissom fingers always busy working out 
some plan of her loving heart and active brain. 

There, as we sat on the wolf-skin at her feet, 
she embroidered, and spun, and sang French lays, 
or lisped any English song she had caught from 
our people, interrupting song and work now and 
then to lavish caresses on one or another of us ; 
or, later, to inspect and help the mimic tasks we 
set ourselves in imitation of hers. 

And morning, noon, and evening there were 
the prayers, beside the crucifix and the Holy 
Family. 

These were the measure and picture of divine 
love she gave us : Almighty Power becoming as 
a child to be near the little ones ; Divine life 
bowing to death to succor the suffering and to 
save the dying; these — and herself^ the Divine 
Image in the Tabernacle not made with hands, 
enshrined in the mother’s heart ; love and au- 
thority, Divine right to rule, authority only felt 
when we rebelled or strayed, and then only felt 
as a power driving back to love. For she could 


22 


yOAN‘ THE MAID. 


be stern ; the heart of the ruler was in her 
There was a dignity in that gentle presence 
which guarded court within court of her being 
from any intrusion. 

When she was present at any revel in the 
hall, the voices grew softer, and everywhere un- 
der her gentle sway, joyous and childlike as she 
was, and little bent on ruling, order came and 
diligence and thankfulness ; and sloth and sad- 
ness fled away. 

Moreover, dear as order and beauty were to 
her, the highest order and beauty were dearest. 
I mean goodness and justice ; and I well remem- 
ber how this was stamped on our hearts by some- 
thing that happened one winter evening. 

The winds had been very wild for days, and 
my father had been much away, when one evening 
he came up the stone steps leading to my mother’s 
room, with the tramp of many feet behind him. 
Coming up to her and kissing her, he said, — 

“ I bring thee fair feathers, my lady, to line 
thy nest.” And the men who followed brought 
in a cedar chest, carved and inlaid with other 
foreign woods, and laid it before her and left. 

One beautiful robe after another of rich 
oriental stuffs my father drew out of it, and un- 
rolled before her, and at the bottom a gorgeous 
Arabian carpet, which he unfolded with fond 
pride before her feet. 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


23 

“ My lady’s dainty feet will have something at 
last worthy for them to tread on,” he said. 

But she, instead of welcoming his gifts, hid 
her face in her hands and burst into tears. 

“ Beloved,” she sobbed, “ these are bridal 
dresses, and where is the bride?” 

“ How can I tell?” he said ; ‘Hhe ship was 
dashed to pieces before we saw it. They say she 
was from France, but none of the crew or passen- 
gers have been found ; only this chest dashed 
and jammed into a cranny of the rocks. We 
scaled them and saved it for thee, at some toil 
and peril of more lives than one.” 

She laid her head on his breast, still weeping. 

“ Forgive me,” she said, “but how could I 
forget the poor face that smiled from these splen- 
dors last ? She may have kindred, mother, hus- 
band, weeping for her. Let us find them, be- 
loved, and send it to them. It does not belong 
to us.” 

For reply, he took the rejected robe in his 
arms, squeezed it passionately together, went to 
the oratory window by the crucifix, opened it, and 
threw it into the foaming cauldron which seethed 
up against the perpendicular rocks beneath. 

“ It was won for thee at peril of lives nearer 
to thee than this pool young French woman,” 
he said ; “ but it matters not, let it go to those 
to whom it belongs.” 


24 


yOAN THE MAID. 


And he strode out of the room, leaving he! 
weeping, and us children sore amazed and dis- 
mayed. 

He did not reappear for many hours, and 
when he came back it was dusk ; but all the an- 
ger had gone out of his voice, as he went up to 
her, bent fondly over her and laid her hand on 
his cheek. 

“ Dear,” he said, “ I bring thee another kind 
of offering to-night.” 

And there was a mingled sorrow and tender- 
ness in the broken tones of his deep voice which 
echoes in my ear to-day. 

“ Come down,” he said, ** they are laid in the 
chapel before the altar. There is nothing to 
shock thee.” 

“ They?” she said. 

“ They ; the bodies of the mother and the 
babe,” he could trust his voice to no more. And 
so we went down to the castle chapel, our father 
carrying Elaine on one arm, and leading my 
mother with the other hand, while Owen and I 
crept on awe-stricken behind. 

And as we went he murmured in a hoarse 
voice — 

We found them lying quite peacefully on 
the white sands in a nook of the rocks, the 
babe clasped in the mother’s arms.” 

And there they lay, still, on the pier before 


PERCIVALS STORY. 


25 


the altar, with a white drapery shrouding the 
limbs, locked in an embrace stronger than death. 

“ Give them rest, give them rest,” wailed from 
the aged priest’s voice, in the Requiem Mass. 
As to the body it had been given. 

Indeed, the wild waves seemed to have borne 
them to that resting-place, where they were 
found to all seeming unhurt, like some delicate 
unbroken shell, unwounded and unmarred ; only 
dead. 

We never forgot it, any of us. 

And afterwards a change came over my father 
as to wrecks, 

Before, he, and we too, had shared the com- 
mon feeling of the coast, taking them as ‘‘ God- 
sends,” committing the poor souls indeed Chris- 
tianly to God, but heeding little the poor bodies ; 
reaping as a sea-harvest the treasures they had 
been snatched from by the wild sea, which was to 
us as a defensive army and a fisher of treasure. 

But from that time it seemed stamped indeli- 
bly on his heart that the human creatures were 
worth unspeakably more than the treasures. 

And when a ship in danger loomed on us 
within the fatal string of our rocky bow, he never 
failed to call all his men together to save perish- 
ing lives, let the goods be rescued or not. 

Henceforth, moreover, though he distributed 
a portion of the wrecked goods among his men 
% 


26 


yOAJV' THE MAID, 


as a reward for the toil and danger they encoun- 
tered, his own portion he never more touched, 
but gave it to the nearest religious house, to 
make provision for the shipwrecked. 

Such reaping was there from the sowing of 
our mother’s tears. 

Yet happy as she seemed, and was, I suppose 
the rough life and climate told on her more deli- 
cate nature. For, after that, I remember less and 
less her sharing our rambles and plays, partly 
perhaps because they became more boyish, and 
it was a pride to Owen and me to go with the 
fishermen and huntsmen where the women could 
not follow. I remember her more at home in 
her own room, not so much as a voice and a 
power, but as a kind of silent presence of sun- 
shine, a smile welcoming, a love embracing us. I 
think she must have ceased to sing, for the 
warbling of French lays and English ballads dies 
away unexplained from my recollection. Yet 
fragments of story float back to me on the tide 
of that far-off sea ; legends of the Round Table, 
and more especially of the Quest of the San- 
greal. 

I remember a dim splendor as of a far-off 
opened heaven, and the Sacred Chalice floating 
down to mortal men, life-blood of agony and 
wine of joy, seen only by the pure, or if seen by 
the impure, seen but as fire piercing to the bone? 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


27 


and marrow with keen, purifying anguish ; of the 
Round Table with all its inspiriting adventures, 
its rescues of the oppressed, its joyous triumph- 
ings, and jousts, and feasts, scattered on this 
mysterious Quest, the knights wandering hither 
and thither, and all the noble company smitten 
once more apart, each on his separate way, all 
seeking and so few finding, and the king broken- 
hearted, and the kingdom broken. 

And yet through all the ruin glimpses of a 
deeper love and a higher life, and a wonderful 
shining through of the sacred name of Jesus, 
like a key-note to which all the discords had to 
come at last. 

The sister of Sir Percival giving the life-blood 
from her arm to rescue the dying lady ; her fair 
corpse floating alone to its burial on the solitary 
sea ; Sir Lancelot led into that mysterious ship, 
and sailing with the dead maiden to the won- 
drous castle ; Galahad entering the heavenly 
land as calmly as he had entered the hall of the 
knights. 

Strangely that Quest of the Sangreal is min- 
gled with the last months of our mother’s life. 

Seas which were familiar to us as our pwn, 
yet bordered by lands no rportal feet haye trod- 
den ; lands whose names were tiousehpld words, 
suddenly opening straight on heaven ; chambers 
which angels entered, and no one was surprised ; 


28 


THE MAID. 


stories with no beginning breaking off unfinished ; 
death and life mystically intermingled, with un- 
namable horror and unspeakable joy, as they 
were in that death-chamber of my mother’s, 
which had been a warm, furry, feathery nest 
to us. 

For she was fading from us slowly, surely ; 
the body vanquishing the spirit, silencing its ut- 
terance, and narrowing its outward working day 
by day ; the body vanquished by the spirit, which 
shone clearer and clearer through. She was pass- 
ing from us, the spirit of order and love and beau- 
ty of our home ; and everything seemed break- 
ing up with her. 

Our father refused to see danger, and Owen 
was like him, and never would see what he did 
not wish to see. They went more eagerly than 
ever to the chase and the fishing, and when they 
catne home the story of their adventures stirred 
our mothers heart and colored her cheek for the 
time, and they deemed her recovering, and we nt 
forth again to the sea and the forest, and smiled 
at the croakings of those who staid at home. 

But I could not leave. There must be 5$ome 
stationary creature to be leaned upon in trouble, 
and in this trouble it happened to be me. 

My mother in her sure vision of the coming 
sorrow, our little sister in her horror of childish 
ignorance of life and death, both needed me, and 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


looked foi me. To me alone our mother would 
often speak of the things she dreaded in the life 
around — the wild revels, the reckless adventure ; 
yet her joyous spirit seldom failed. She made a 
bright place of her sick-room ; and many a gay 
moment we had by her bedside, we three, over 
the cooking and nursing she taught us. 

Until the night came when I was lying on 
my little bed in a corner awake, while Elaine 
was asleep, and suddenly the dear familiar voice 
came to me with a tone that seemed new and 
strange, and solemn, and sent a shudder through 
me. 

Come near,” she said, “ quite near.” 

And I rose and crept near. 

It was a wild night. Th^ spray dashed 
against the window, the wind howled through 
the clefts of the rocks, and the waves dashed 
against the foundations of the castle. And there 
was a sound like the pecking of a bird’s beak 
against the pane, which had a terror kw us be- 
cause some one had told us it wac a c-^U for a 
soul to come home. But somehow the terror 
seemed gone out of all these things for me. The 
terror was so much more terrible in the change- 
in that dear familiar voice. It seemed far off, 
like a voice from the higher air, belonging to us 
and our world no more. 

“ My darling,” she said, “ I am going home, 


30 JOAN THE MAID, 

Take care of them all! Take care of them all fof 
me 

And then came a violent fit of coughing, and 
our foster-mother came in from the next cham- 
ber, and I was sent for Father Adam, and there 
was terror and hurry around her; all the house- 
hold rushing together to join in the last prayers, 
and be present at the last sacred rites. 

Terror and tempest within and without, 
winds and waves howling wildly outside, batter- 
ing the walls and rattling the windows ; within, 
voices hushed to whispers more fearful than any 
shrieks. But she, meanwhile, lay quiet ; with a 
depth of prayer and peace in her eyes, as they 
turned from us towards heaven, with our father’s 
name sighing on her lips, and then clear and full 
the name of “Jesus,” as I never heard it again 
until it rose from the lips of the Maid amidst the 
fires of Rouen. 

And there she lay, at last, for the first time, 
with no answer in her eyes to mine ; and yet, 
boy as I was, inspiration came to me with her 
last words. I seemed not so much to have lost 
her, as to have to succeed her. 

Not to be cared for any more, but to care for 
others, that was the dying charge. And Elaine, 
though she had not heard it (none heard those 
words but me), seemed to feel it, for she clung 
to me, and looked to me to decide, to will, to 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


31 


think, almost it seemed, to live and breathe for 
her. But with my father and Owen it was dif- 
ferent. What, indeed, could a child like me do 
for them ? 

From some of those mysterious spells that 
seal the lips of children, I never could tell him 
or any one, then, of those last words. 

He came to me, like a child, for me to tell 
him again and again every detail of the last days, 
and never wearied of my saying how his name had 
been on her lips to the last. But the misery mas- 
tered him, as it must do all who do not master it. 
And after a time he seemed to shrink from all 
that recalled her, even from Elaine and me. 

The Almighty knows the way He takes, but, 
to all seeming, the world, little or great, is not 
better, but lower and worse for the blanks the 
good leave in it. 

Gradually the old wild life, which had reigned 
in the castle before our mother came to it, was 
resumed. There were days of the chase, followed 
by drinking bouts deep into the night, and the 
wrecking customs stealing in again unreproved, 
and Owen at all the revels ; the oaths, for which 
we English were too famous everywhere, seem- 
ing to amuse the revellers like a lady’s jest from 
the boyish lips of Owen, the wit and darling of 
those wild revels ; and all my mother’s lessons, 
it seemed, buried with her. 


32 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


Her charge lay heavy on me, and I had to 
work it out all alone. How was I to “care ” for 
Owen, or any one? What did “ taking care' 
mean? Certainly it did not mean scolding or 
even advising. What had it meant with our 
mother? Chiefly, it seemed to me, being good 
and loving. First of all, loving. 

This became clear to me one night, when the 
mirth in the hall had been especially wild, and 
Owen especially brilliant, flashing at last into 
impertinence, impertinence which angered my 
father, who forthwith dispatched us both to 
bed. 

As usual, I turned to go into our mother’s 
empty chamber, before I slept, to say the old 
prayers before the crucifix. I asked Owen to 
come with me ; but he dashed impatiently away. 
“ I am no priest,” he said pettishly, “ though I 
am not the eldest son. Pity thou wert the eld- 
est ; I heard old Sir Bors say to my father, thou 
wouldst have made a grave and gentle abbot.” 

“And what did our father answer?” 

“ He only laughed, and said it was as well his 
Jacob had the birthright, the Esaus too often 
only threw it away.” 

“ Did my father call me Jacob ?” I said, and 
a sudden passion of resentment seized me. For 
Father Adam had been telling this history of 
Esau and Jacob lately to Elaine and me, and we 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 33 

agreed in thinking Jacob a mean traitor and sup- 
planter. 

“Jacob robbed and cheated his brother. 
What but good have I ever done to thee ?” 

“ Good enough,” he laughed lightly — “ enough 
and too much. Sermons on swearing, as good 
as Father Adam’s. Go to thy prayers ; but 
don’t, I beg, say them double for me. I had 
rather be preached to, than prayed for, like a 
soul in purgatory.” 

His words stung me to the heart, and I went 
alone to our mother’s oratory, not so much to 
pray as to complain to God how unjust my 
brother was. But I did not find the oratory 
empty. Little Elaine was there. 

“ I have been waiting for thee, brother,” she 
said (she always called me only “ brother”). “ I 
thought you would bring Owen.” 

“ I have been trying to bring Owen,” I said, 
“ and he will not come.” 

“ Then we two must pray for him,” she said. 

“ He told me not,” I said, my heart still a 
cauldron black and foaming, like that sea outside. 

“ That shows he wants it all the more,” she 
said, a little sleepily, leaning her fair head on my 
shoulder. 

“ But he has said cruel things to me !” I mur- 
mured. 

“ Hush !” she whispered, “ we must not tell 
2 * 


34 JOAN- THE MAID. 

God that. It might make him displeased with 
Owen ! 

And she began, and I had to join, and to put 
off my complainings. The little one had saved 
me from one of those terrible prayers which are 
so like curses. 

“ Dear brother Owen,” we said ; and ‘Met us 
say another Our Father for him,” she added. 
And as I said it, the cauldron in my heart sub- 
sided into a soft ripple on a sunny beach. 

“ Forgive us our trespasses,” I said, “ ours 
ours.” And when I came back to lie down by 
Owen’s side, he made a sleepy movement, and 
said, “ Never mind, old man — you are not at all 
like Jacob, nor I like Esau. You would give me 
your birthright if I wanted it, I know, and the 
mess of pottage into the bargain. And you may 
pray for me as much as you will ; only come and 
fish and hunt with me too !” And he went to 
sleep, quite composed by his concession ; for in 
all our little differences, whatever he had done, 
or left undone, Owen had a wonderful way of 
always being in the end the one, not to be for- 
given, but to forgive. 

That night, I lay awake a long time, feeling 
penitent, but happy, because forgiven I hoped 
by every one, by Owen, by God, and by myself 
For I had been having a bitter taste of the /ery 
cauldron of hell, which is helpless resentment 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


35 


itifd hate ; and I had come into a vision of heav- 
en, which is the victory of love. For some 
months I had been living chiefly for and with 
Elaine, trying to make her life less lonely, scaling 
rocks to get wild birds’ eggs for her, taking her 
out in a boat when it was safe for her, training a 
little moorland pony for her to ride, and teach- 
ing her to ride it. 

Unconsciously I had been making a selfish 
little Paradise apart for us two, such as I thought 
our mother would smile on, and judging from 
this serene height the poor struggling ones be- 
low. And waking up I found my Paradise a 
prison in which, while shutting others out, I had 
shut myself in. But yet it puzzled me, that try- 
ing to fulfil m.y mother’s command should have 
brought me to the verge of hating my brother; 
and I resolved, the next day, to tell Father Adam 
what she had said, and to ask him how I could 
fulfil it. 

Father Adam had been taking care of people 
so many years, he ought to know. In general 
he never seemed to have much to say ; but where 
trouble and perplexity were, he was always 
wanted, and always at hand. And a few days 
before he had spoken of preparing us for our first 
communion next Easter. I sought him, there- 
fore, in the chapel, after his morning mass, and 
told him all. 


3 ^ 


yOAN THE MAID. 


To take care !” he sighed. “ To be a shep- 
herd when thou art but a poor helpless lamb !” 

‘‘ Was it a mistake?” I said, feeling the ques- 
tion almost blasphemy. 

“ It was the yearning of the mother’s heart, 
longing to leave something motherly behind,” he 
said after a pause. “ God forbid I should say 
such sacred last words were a mistake. But there 
is the devil within and around us, the proud, dis- 
contented spirit ; and he is content enough to 
have any of us shepherds, or anything, if only 
he can hinder our being humble sheep, follow- 
ing the good shepherd.” 

“ And lambs, of course,” I said, “ cannot be 
shepherds.” 

“ All the sheep, and lambs too, are shepherds, 
or shepherd helpers,” he replied, “ as far as they 
are true sheep. The lambs may shepherd the 
lambs, but chiefly by being good lambs.” 

Was I not trying to be a good lamb ?” I 

said. 

“A little too good, perhaps,” he said, with a 
little dry, kind smile ; “ as good as a sheep dog. 
A lamb that keeps bleating and moaning over 
the straying ones is, after all, not a shepherd, but 
only a troublesome lamb.” 

But, father, surely I did not bark or bite !” 
I said. 

“ No ; only growled a little softly,” he replied, 


PERCIVAL'S STORY, 37 

and wert a little too near calling in the dogs to 
bark and bite.” 

I hung my head, feeling not sure whether 
Father Adam misunderstood me, or understood 
me better than I understood myself. 

“ Can thy father teach thee nothing, and give 
thee no share of his work ?” he resumed. 

“ He has, Owen,” I said. 

But thou hast thy father,” he replied, “ to 
honor and obey. And hast thou nothing to learn 
of Owen ?” he continued, laying his hand a mo- 
ment on my bowed head. “ Is there nothing thy 
brother does better than thou ?” 

“ Many things,” I said. And by my humili- 
ation in saying so I knew that the thorn which 
had fretted the sore in my heart was being pulled 
out. “ He rides and manages a boat better than 
I can.” 

“ Then tell him so, and let him teach and 
help thee,” Father Adam replied. “ Keep be- 
side him and thy father at sea, at the chase, at 
the feast.” 

** At the drinking bouts ?” I said ; “with the 
oaths and the drunken songs ?” 

“ Other people’s evil words need not hurt 
thee,” said the old man thoughtfully. 

“ But if I should grow used to them, and cease 
to hate them T* 

“If we love good, that is God, enough we 


38 


yOAl^ THE MAID. 


shall never cease to hate evil. If we love our 
brothers enough, we shall never cease to grieve 
Ht what hurts them. We may scorn the sin, and 
iiate the sinner. But if we love the sinner 
enough, we must hate the sin.’* 

“ But the wrecking,” I resumed, “ which my 
mother hated and stopped. Should I be 
there ?” 

‘‘ There, above all,” he said, his dry, slow 
speech kindling up. “ There, to do what she 
would ; save men, instead of cargoes.” 

“ It is hard,” I said. 

** The sea is harder than the shore,” he re- 
plied ; but thou art a man, not a woman. 
Though indeed women, poor things ! in their 
way, have as good a share as any of the waves 
and storms.” 

His words seemed stern and sharp to me at 
first. My mother had seemed to lift me to be a 
sharer with herself. And Father Adam seemed 
to put me below my brother. Was this just? 
The old man probab^ saw this in my face, for he 
came back, and said to me very gently, — 

“Thy mother made no mistake, my boy. 
With God’s help thou shalt yet take care of them 
all. But an old shepherd who has made many 
mistakes may save thee from some. There is 
but one holiness for all, for we are all children, 
and for children, above all, to learn and to love, 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 39 

Those who learn are sure to teach. Those who 
love are sure to serve.” 

And so with his own hands the old priest 
pushed my little boat off through the breakers, 
and kept me from fancying I was helping those 
in peril on the sea by wailing and wringing hands 
upon the shore. 

I linger so long on these early days, because 
in them lie the roots of my life, the double pa- 
rentage which linked us with France as well as 
England ; the words of my mother, which have 
been the spring of my life, inspiring me to such 
humble bits of care-taking and shepherding as 
made me understand a little more Joan the Maid, 
and those to whom the feeding of the great flocks 
is given. 

The next months I spent beside my brother 
and my father, learning what I could of the craft 
of the huntsman and the seaman, and all knightly 
exercises. For none of these things were play to 
us. The wild boars and wolves had not been 
driven out of the neighboring forests, and in win- 
ter often made inroads on the peasants’ fields. 

On the sea, perilous as it was, much of our 
actual livelihood depended. And on land or at 
sea war has been no rare outbreak, but the con- 
tinual state of Christendom during the whole of 
my life. 

For seventy years the war with France had 


40 


yOAJ\r THE MAID, 


lasted, from a time before we were born, without 
symptom of close or decision. The hero of our 
boyhood was the valiant young King Henry V. 
Agincourt echoed across to us in the autumn of 
1414. I remember it by the bonfires signalling 
the victory from point to point along our coast, 
and by my mother having a requiem mass said 
daily for all the slain, French and English ; for 
all, she said, met at one gate on the other side of 
death, and were no more separated into French 
and English there, but into the wicked and the 
just. And into her dying chamber, four years 
afterwards, the news of our king’s marriage at 
Troyes with the French Princess Katharine, 
brought hope and gladness. She thought it 
might bring peace and amity, knowing less of 
politics than of pity ; and in that hope she went 
where, with the larger vision, it must be easier 
to wait. And soon after she died came the birth 
at Windsor, of the little prince, Henry VI. of 
England and France ; and then the death of the 
valiant King Henry V., and the division of power 
among his brothers, Bedford, Gloucester, Beau- 
fort. But never peace. 


CHAPTER II. 

ELAINE’S STORY. 

W HEN my brother Percival left me to go 
on his true Quest, to lead the boy’s be- 
ginning of the knightly life with Owen, hunting 
the wild animals through moor and forest, and 
cleaving the wild waves in the fishing craft, he 
went forth to a world of life and stir, of living 
voices and living deeds. But I was left in a land 
of echoes out of a dead world, 

I sat trying to finish my mother’s embroider- 
ies, or I climbed alone the old places where we 
used to go to bring her flowers and sea-treasures, 
or I murmured over the old prayers. But all, 
work and wanderings and prayers, seemed like 
dying echoes of what had been. Of course I did 
not say this to myself then ; but I understand it 
now, in looking back. 

It seemed to me as if all life were as the Morte 
d’Arthur our mother told us of. I wandered 
alone, like the king by “ the waters wap and the 
waves wan,” on the shore of ghosts and echoes, 
and everything in this life seemed like a heap of 
broken stories without meaning, friendship de* 


42 


yOAN THE MAID, 


ceived, and love loving wrong, and highest hopes 
ending in failure ; and there lay no hope save in 
death, and not much in that, lest it should prove 
v/e had entered the next world at the wrong 
gate, and find it as bewildered and inexplicable 
as this. 

I was but a child, but I was feeble and 
dwarfed, and not as other children ; and when I 
looked at my own face in my mother’s steel mir- 
ror sometimes, it seemed to me as fair as hers, 
and when I saw and felt my own misshapen 
limbs, they seemed to me a picture of all this 
twisted and puzzled world ; as if an enemy, a 
wicked elf, had broken into some sculptor’s carv- 
ing-chamber, and had misplaced all the work, 
putting heads of angels on bodies of satyrs, and 
crowning a beautiful arrow-pierced Sebastian 
with the face of a grinning fool. 

Then I tried to comfort myself by thinking 
of the Sangreal, of Galahad always victor, and 
Percival victor, though all but vanquished, and, 
above all, of the sister of Percival, who shed the 
blood from her arm to give life to the dying lady, 
and thereof herself died. 

That seemed to me the loveliest story of all 
the only glimpse of hope in all the dark and 
tangled web of the world. Living blood of 
sacrifice like that might come even from a maid 
like me from a shrivelled arm like mine. 


ELAINE* S STORY. 


43 


The sister of Sir Percival became to me like a 
sister of my own. She was my solace, she and 
the crucifix, my mother’s great wooden crucifix 
with the bowed head and tender patience of the 
brows and lips, and the mercy in the outstretched 
arms. 

But that was also death ; failure and defeat 
and death. How many must have been cruel 
beyond thought, how many more must have 
been ungrateful and forgetful exceedingly, ere 
that Healer and Lover of men could have been 
stretched on that cross ! 

It was not defeat, it was victory. Father Ad- 
am said. It was redemption. 

But when I thought of our mother dying, and 
the evil things she hated living on, and the peo- 
ple she grieved over growing worse, of the drink- 
ing bouts and the wreckings, who and what, I 
kept asking, were redeemed ? 

Mother Margery, our foster-mother, saw, I 
suppose, that I was growing unnaturally thin 
and pale and grave. For one day she took me 
to her cottage in the sheltered nook under the 
cliff, and she said, “ It is not good for little ones 
to be alone.” And there all that day I watched 
Margery spinning and then weaving at her loom. 
And it was a rest and delight to me to see some- 
thing growing, coming into being, instead of 
fading, though it was only a ball of yarn and a 


44 


yO^N' THE MAID, 


web of coarse wool. And close at hand, in a 
shed outside, was her husband Peter’s workshop, 
where he made yokes and ploughs and benches. 
It was like a breath of spring to me to see this 
weaving and making. The work at the castle 
seemed so much to be mere hunting and driving 
the creatures to death on sea and land, or reap- 
ing dead men’s harvests, or at best mending or 
using or decorating other people’s work. But 
on this lower level of the world I seemed to 
touch higher work, more like God’s, shaping, 
making, and causing new things to be. 

Margery let me come as often and stay as 
long as I liked. She taught me to spin and 
weave, and Peter made me little tools and taught 
me to shape platters and boxes, for I could not 
bear to make anything not real — that could not 
be used. And to see things grow into being out 
of shapelessness — out of nothing — was a delight. 
Also it took me from the weary copying of the 
embroidery full of the traces of my mother’s fin- 
gers without her smile. 

Peter and I became great friends. 

Why do not the nobles and knights choose 
to be carpenters,” I said to him one day, “ in- 
stead of huntsmei and fishers ? It seems to me 
as if they chose the work of beasts instead of the 
work of men.” 

A flash came across Peter’s face. It was not 


ELAJ^E'S STORY. 


45 


a great ruddy, blunted face like many of those I 
saw, but a sharp, pallid, eager face, such as might 
have suited my little body better than his, mus- 
cular and compact as it was, though not tall. 

“ A great Prince, the Noble of nobles, did 
once choose to be a carpenter,” he said. 

“You mean God,” I said, “ our Father Christ. 
But He came from so very high, I suppose all 
here below seemed just the same to Him.” 

“ I don’t think it all seemed the same,” was 
Peter’s answer. “ I think He knew and chose 
the best.” 

That was quite a new light to me. 

Of course I knew Jesus our Lord, and the 
blessed apostles and disciples, had been poor, 
but I always thought they were knights and 
dames all the time, like Sir Joseph of Arimathea, 
and St. Mary Magdalene, who lived in her own 
castle, and only put poverty on as a disguise, like 
knights at a joust. 

I knew also that holy men, hermits, and friars 
had chosen to be poor and to wear wretched 
clothes ; but every one knew that was because 
they were holy, not because they could not 
help it. 

That our heavenly King should have been 
really a carpenter, and worked at a real bench, 
like Peter’s, for real bread, was a new thought to 
me ; and at first I did not like it at all. I had 


46 


y^OJJV THE MAID. 


thought, if I thought at all, that the distinction 
between knights and churls was practically in- 
ward and eternal, and that our servants would 
naturally be delighted to serve us forever in the 
next world. In the Arthur legends there were 
no poor at all, save serving men and people to 
fight and be killed in the great battles. 

But if the Lord Christ had chosen to be a 
carpenter everything seemed turned upside 
down ; and who could say if it might not con- 
tinue so in that other world ? 

I suppose Margery saw I was displeased, for 
she said to Peter, “ Keep thy levelling notions to 
thyself. They have cost us enough already.” 

For some days I did not go back to the cot- 
tage. But the seed Peter had dropped was liv- 
ing, and it grew. The more displeased I was, 
the more I wanted to see Peter again, and tell 
him. And, after all, when I came to think of it, 
the poor being so many, if indeed they were 
more in the place of the Master, the world might, 
after all, be less of a tangle than it looked in the 
legends and from the castle. 

When I went back for some time Peter was 
dumb. 

But the ice soon melted ; and slowly, day by 
day, a new world all around and beneath us, but 
as unknown as Ind or Cathay, opened before me ; 
the great world of toiling men and women — the 


ELAmE'S STORY. 


47 


masons who built our churches and castles the 
carpenters who made our beds and tables the 
smiths who forged our knightly arms. And this 
world here in England, I found, had a history of 
its own graven in the hearts of men — a history 
of toil, and of wrong, of struggles for what they 
deemed Divine rights through what we deemed 
rebellion. There were names honored as heroic 
in this world, which we considered infamous, 
which I had hitherto heard spoken with a curse, 
like Judas; John Ball, the priest; Jack Straw, 
Wat Tyler, or one of our own class, a traitor to 
the Church and the State, hanged and slowly 
burned not many years before at St. Giles’s 
Fields, near London, called in this new world 
“ the good Lord Cobham.” 

And through this under world, at this mo 
ment, and for forty years, were sounding the 
words gf a Book an English Book (the Book all 
Christians held sacred, but no other Christians 
seemed to possess, save in Latin), plain, homely, 
mighty. Divine words done into English fifty 
years ago by a learned priest called Wyclifife. 
And this Book Peter seemed to know by heart, at 
• least the part of it about our Lord , for I learned 
it all from his lips. The Book itself was a hidden 
treasure I did not see for years afterwards. 

And wonderful was the hope that story gave 
to me. It quietly adjusted everything pieced 


48 


yOA.V THE MAID. 


the broken world, and our little broken lives— 
gave meaning to the inexplicable ; and yet not 
by trying to explain things, but simply by bring- 
ing in the Light. It made me even learn to give 
thanks for my poor misshapen body. It was a 
link with the misshapen, twisted world below ; 
and it was a link with the healing Lord, who 
lived so much among the sick. 

In that carpenter’s cottage two things were 
set open to me, which have made the joy and 
the work of all my life : the great world of the 
poor, of the people ; and the life of the Master 
I escaped out of the prison of the rich, the luxu- 
rious, the few. I learned to love the wide world 
of the toiling, the poor, who earn daily bread by 
daily work. 

And there, walking with them along the dusty 
highways, sailing with them in their fishing-boats, 
asking a drink of water from one of them at the 
village well, toiling beside them at the carpen- 
ter’s bench, resting with them on the grass, 
clothed like them, eating of their common food, 
paying tax and tribute among them ; not living 
in the castle and visiting them thence, but living 
in the fisherman’s cottage, and letting the rich* 
and great, if also weary and heavy-laden, come to 
Him — deeper, lower than that, dying the death of 
a bondman, I found my Lord. I found Him in 
the field, by the sea-shore, by the poor sick-bed • 


ELAINE’S STORY. 


49 


and wherever He came I found Him healing the 
sick, blessing the children, forgiving (which is the 
highest healing), bringing patience and hope, and 
joy unspeakable, and light and love. 

Then, going back to the castle, I found Him 
there also. Going back to our mother’s-crucifix, 
I found — ah ! I found that the head so patiently 
bowed there was the face I knew best, and loved 
best in all the world. 

And He, not dead, but living. 

Not a soft silvery feather in a sea-gull’s breast, 
not a curve or a fold in a pinion or a shell but 
His living touch was there. Not a sick child or 
a worn-out laborer in the fields, but through the 
parched or lisping lips murmured His, “ Me ! — • 
unto Me!'' Jesus and the poor. Ah, what a 
world to j.ive — to die for! What a life to live 
with, to live in, to live by ! 

And all the while, though we knew it not, 
He was training in the quiet valley by the river 
Meuse, in a peasant’s cottage, helping her father 
in the fields and her mother by the hearth, a 
child, a little peasant maiden, obeying the voice 
of her parents, and with heart open to hear the 
voice of her King, Joan the Maid, “ Daughter 
of God,” deliverer of France from ruin and Eng- 
land from crime, renewing the world, as of old, 
from the lowly places, whither go the roots and 
whence spring the wells of life. 

3 


CHAPTER III. 

PETER THE WRIGHT’S STORY. 

W HEN first she came to us — the child, the 
maid, the little Dame Elaine, — came to 
my Margery’s cottage in her dainty raiment, her 
fine linen and purple, her golden net around her 
brown hair, her mother’s jewels clasping her white 
throat — I hated the sight of her. She seemed 
to me, she and hers, like evil, fair, fat ghouls 
that had lived on the blood of our lost little ones. 
I was sullen and sour to her in my heart, how- 
ever Margery might constrain me to be courte- 
ous. We had suffered so much from her like, 
since the days when, after the rising under Wat 
Tyler, the people had trusted themselves like 
loyal brothers, like guileless children, to the royal 
word of the boy-king, Richard, and had then by 
him and his forty thousand been hung like snared 
vermin, or tortured like hunted-down beasts of 
prey. My father was a yeoman with his own 
good freehold then, hardly earned and thriftily 
kept. But the men of law working for the ba- 
rons disputed his title, and robbed us of our land, 
and then, being landless, brought us under the 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY. 5 1 

Statute of Laborers, and forbade us to leave the 
land they had robbed us of, constraining us to 
till it for the lord, or to live on what he chose to 
give. 

They dragged us down into bondage again, 
and broke my father’s heart. There was no way 
left out of our misery but through the Church ; 
and my father, who had learned much of Wyc- 
liffe and his poor priests, seeing I loved learning, 
strove to get me made a clerk. He hoped I 
would also have been a priest, either “ poor” to 
teach the poor, which he thought “divine,” or 
rising on the ladder of the priesthood as count- 
less before had done, to be a parson, an abbot 
or even a bishop, remembering in the palace the 
heart of the poor, and so binding poor to rich. 

But, woe to us ! the Church herself had 
grown worldly, the abbots were land-owners as 
proud as the barons, the bishops were courtiers 
of England or Rome, the friars were pardon- 
sellers and plunderers of the poor, and none 
wanted landless men. 

And, moreover, the lords did their utmost to 
shut out the old way to freedom from us ; they 
sought to make a law that no son of a bondman 
or bondwoman should be suffered to take orders 
in the Church, lest by that means they might be 
advanced in the world. 

Thus, the end of my learning and reading 


52 


yOAN THE MAID. 


was only that I could read. And so, while my 
feet were as fettered as ever, my mind was set 
free to think, and my eyes were opened to see • 
which only made the bonds chafe harder. 

We had but two books (I never learned 
T.atin), two English books. Piers Plowman and 
Wycliffe’s Bible. These we kept carefully hid- 
den in the straw of a mattress, and on winter 
nights, when labor was done, by the light of a 
candle, I used to read. 

Both of the books seemed to deepen the 
gloom. Piers the Plowman sang dolefully how 
money, meed and greed ruled all, only checked by 
hunger, which assailed both rich and poor. 

For the ravages of the Black Death were 
scarcely over when he wrote, when half the peo- 
ple in our parts died within a few months, and 
the fields were left untilled, and half of many a 
stricken flock lay dead, with no priest to bury 
them, and the other half strayed, helpless and 
hopeless, with no shepherd to care for them ; 
and the cattle wandered through the unreaped 
corn, with none to hinder or to herd them. 
That book was a doleful picture of a doleful 
world. 

But the other book, as all may know, dark as 
its pictures of the world are, being true, is nev- 
ertheless a book of hope and a gospel. Yet to 
me in those days it brought no hope. I thought 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY. 53 

of it as the book forbidden by the worldly priests, 
the Lollard book, for which men had been con- 
tent to be burnt, which had taught the sheep to 
know and to hate the hireling shepherds, which 
had inspired the generation of my father to hope 
in a just Christ, King of rich and poor, and to rise 
for their divine and human rights, cost what it 
might. 

And there I stood amidst the ruins of our 
father’s rights and hopes, old wrongs riveted 
down on our necks, as it seemed, for ever, with 
fresh chains. And there was a bitter comfort in 
seeing that the book condemned the robbery of 
the poor, and said that their blood cried out unto 
God from the ground. The blood of the mul- 
titudes whick had cried out so long, and no answer 
had come, save that old promise that there would 
come a day of doom ! 

Not a little bit here and there was wrong, the 
book said to me (as I deemed). All was wrong; 
popes, and kings, and barons, and priests, and 
friars. War was wicked, and riches were a curse, 
and law only forged chains to fix on the wrongs ; 
and the burden of all the wrongs rolled ever 
down and down upon us, the peasants. 

The lord of our village was a hard man ; he 
went to the wars in France, and he must have 
horses, and caparisons, and arms, and men-at- 
arms, and archers to go wdth him — will they, nill 


54 


yOAA^ THE MAID. 


they. And they went ; and there was some 
cruel solace in the thought that our good bow- 
men made the noblest blood of France flow like 
rivers. 

But my lot was to stay at home, and see hun- 
ger lay siege to my own little homestead, and 
strive to keep him off and fail, and see my chil- 
dren pale, and pine, and die, until at last some 
scattered sufferers among us took courage, and 
rose against the lords. But, though despair may 
give courage, it gives scant wisdom ; the leaders 
and teachers, the few nobles and priests, who had 
led us once, were soon gone, on the gibbet, the 
scaffold, or stake. And we had to flee, and Mar- 
gery and I came to the wild western sea, and 
there her last babe was born and died, and the 
peasant’s sorrow went, as was wont, to supply 
the lady’s lack. Margery became foster-mother 
to the boy Percival, and the boy lived and 
flourished, and we were left bereaved and desti- 
tute, to toil at the old toil for the masters, loath- 
somely lightened now of the maintenance of our 
beloved. 

And Margery, being but a mother, and find- 
ing it more needful to love than even to live, 
grew to love the mother and the children. But 
I sate apart, a foreigner among the western men, 
bitter in heart and hopeless, until Elaine the 
maiden came and crept to my heart. 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY. 55 

It was the dwarfed and suffering body, it was 
the wistful look of pain and helplessness in the 
child’s eyes that began to melt the ice. And 
then her tears for our sorrows. 

Margery would never let me talk bitter talk to 
the child, which at first made me sullen and si- 
lent, and then constrained me to tell what I knew, 
leaving the bitterness out ; and in telling her the 
story, the wrongs grew sweetened into sorrows. 

For had not she also sorrows, the innocent 
babe } sorrows that looked like wrongs, but which, 
if wrongs, could be traced to no hand but Al- 
mighty God’s ; which made a break in the cry of 
revolt and bitter complaining. And then she 
wrung out of me, I scarce know how, the story 
of the Gospels. And as I told it to the child, and 
saw her dear face glow and shine at the words 
and works of Christ, the form of the Son of 
Man seemed to change to me, and instead of the 
avenging judge scourging the traffickers from the 
Temple, and thundering woe after woe on the 
rich (though that is also true), I saw the Healer 
touching the outcast leper none would touch, 
letting the sinner no righteous man would look 
at touch Him, the young man in peasant’s 
clothes (He was but thirty) take the little chil- 
dren in His arms; the innocent sufferer answer- 
ing to the blows which knocked the nails into the 
torn hands with “ Father, forgive them.” 


5 ^ 


THE MAID 


Alas, alas ! I saw that poor and rich alike 
had forsaken Him, and had loved Him ; that the 
rich man had stooped to bury the poor mangled 
body ; that He was so poor that the poorest 
were rich compared with Him, and so rich that 
the richest had to come as beggars to Him ; that 
from the throne to the dungeon every corner of 
this earth was sacred with his presence, for He 
was not conquered but the conqueror, not dead 
but living, and loving all — all, rich and poor, no- 
ble and villain, bound and free. And so, meaning 
and hope came into all things slowly, very slowly. 
For I began to see that to grow more like this 
Son of God, by ever so little steps — patient, lov- 
ing, bbedient — was joy, and conquest, and wealth, 
and royalty; and that this was a kind of shaping 
that came not as a child’s snow image, by easy 
moulding of soft hands, .but as with iron and 
gold, by fiery fusing and much hammering. 
Wherefore, it was no wonder that so much of 
the world should be more like a forge than a hall 
of feasting. 

Also, the child led me back again, I scarce 
know how, to religion, which I had grown to hate 
as the hollowest of all the hollownesses of the 
false and hollow world ; the cruelest deception, 
because breaking the highest promise. 

To her it was not hollow. To her, the story 
of the one True Life linked itself to the crucifix 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY, $7 

to her mother’s lessons of Creed and Paternoster, 
and Sacrament and Altar. 

She made me say the Our Father again morn- 
ing and night as when I was a child, taking it for 
granted I had never left it out. And she made 
me come to Mass again with her on Sunday, if 
only to hear the praises of the Agnus Dei, who 
takes away the sins of the world — the Lamb of 
God of whom my book spoke, by the old river, 
and on the throne of God. 

And more, she made me and old Father 
Adam friends ; me who had grown to hate the 
priests and the friars like poison — not without 
reason ; for I found that he and I, and others, 
perchance many of his order, had been all the 
time soldiers in one army, though often fighting 
in the dark against each other. 

Our first acquaintance came about in this 
wise. 

Our little lady expected me to receive the 
Sacrament at Easter. It was many years since I 
had. There had been much angry discussion 
amongst us as to how the body and blood of the 
Lord could or did nourish, or whether heavenly 
treasures could come unsullied through corrupt 
human hands ; whether the wicked unabsolved 
priest could absolve ; whether unholy hands could 
consecrate. 

But of all this I could not speak to the child 
3 ^ 


58 


;)fOAN THE MAID. 


I remember once stammering an excuse that I 
did net like to do what I did not understand. 
But the dark wistful eyes looked wonderingly 
into mine as she said — 

It h not you who have to do it, is it ? I 
thought God did it all, and gave it all. If He 
understands and knows how, is not that enough? 
I thougnt we had only to believe and receive ? 

And the child’s words went deep, — and I had 
to go, aj she said. 

Should I starve myself from bread, because 
wise men could not agree how the seed grew 
into the ear, or because the miller was not 
honest ? 

Accordingly I went to Father Adam to re- 
ceive absolution. I suppose my manner was 
proud and sullen enough, for the old man said — 

“ Have you absolved me ? ” 

I thought he was mocking, and answered 
angrily,— 

“ Little enough do the parsons and friars care 
what the flock has to say to them.” 

But I am one who do care,” he replied quite 
seriously and gently. “ I mean what I say. You 
have been at mass to-day. Have you absolved 
me?” 

And then he read to me out of his book, and 
showed to me how every day, before the people 
confess to the priest, the priest confesses to the 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY. 


59 


people and says, I confess to you, my brothers, 
that I have sinned much by thought, word, and 
deed ; by my fault, by my fault, by my very great 
fault ; and I beseech you, my brethren, to pray 
for me to the Lord our God.” “ And you,” said 
Father Adam, “ by the mouth of the child or 
man who answers, say, ‘ May the Almighty God 
have mercy on you, and, having forgiven your 
sins, lead you to everlasting life.’ Every day I 
have been saying this to you, and you to me.” 

“ It is a pity it was in Latin,” I said. 

“ Perhaps it is !” he replied. “ The words 
were written hundreds of years before there was 
anything but Latin to say it in. But henceforth 
say it in English, brother, for me. You will 
know when I ask you, by my striking my hand 
on my breast.” 

There could be no suspicion that he was jest- 
ing now ; the dry, quiet voice had broken down, 
and tears were running over the old withered 
face. 

“ It is a pity it is all in Latin !” I murmured. 

How was I to know ?” 

“ Forgive us, brother, forgive me,” he said, 
‘ let us all forgive each other, priest and layman, 
prince and peasant. There is much to forgive.” 
And then restraining himself, and his voice gath- 
ering strength and firmness as he spoke, he said, 
“ Only do not think no one ever wanted to set 


6o 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


the wrongs of the world right before you.” And 
then he told me how every monastery, or at least 
every ancient one, however it might now seem a 
mere society of serf-holders and land-owners, 
feasting on the toil of others, had begun in an 
apostolic twelve of hard-working men, living on 
the toil of their own hands, renouncing the joys 
of the w'orld for joy in God, dwelling as laboring 
men among the laboring, as poor among the 
poor, ennobling toil for all, by joining it with 
priestly sacrifice. And friar, he said, meant 
brother. 

If the monks had meant to consecrate labor, 
the friars had meant to glorify poverty, to glorify 
the lot of the multitudes by making it the choice 
of the elect. Poverty and brotherhood. Poor 
as the poorest, to enrich the poor with heavenly 
riches, and brothers of all men. Prince and peas- 
ant were to become among them alike poor and 
alike brother. 

If the friars had kept to their first estate,” 
he said, “ the rich would have learned there is 
no title for Christian men, brethren of Christ, 
higher than brother ; the poor would have 
learned there is no lot higher than labor There 
would have been no peasant revolt, and no Stat- 
ute of Laborers, no Wat Tyler or Jack Straw. 
The church would have gathered all the world 
into a divinely equal brotherhood, and ordered 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY, 


6i 


all men in a divinely differing kingdom.” And 
then with bitter anguish he lamented things as 
they are. 

“ We live ! we live !” he said, “ like the de- 
moniac of Gadara among the tombs. It is an 
age of tombs, and a world of tombs. The mon- 
asteries are whited sepulchres ; the friars are 
open graves ; the crusades are robberies. No 
man now builds great churches ; no man sings 
great songs, or does great deeds. We can but 
copy and conclude, and spoil. Not this or that 
institution only ; all Christendom is a tomb.” 

“ But Christ is risen !” I said, “ and we pray 
Thy kingdom come. Is He then a king like Ar- 
thur in the legends, slumbering in some far-off 
valley! His kingdom broken up, and His work 
ruined? Is that the end?” 

“That is not the end 1” he replied. “One 
earthquake and one angel rolled the stone from 
His Holy Sepulchre. The heavens shall be 
moved, and shall roll up as a scroll, when the 
stone is rolled away from this unholy sepulchre 
in which we live.” 

“ What shall we do then ?” I said. “ flate 
the world ? Lie down and die ?” 

“Nay,” Father Adam replied, “love the 
world the Lord loved, and rise up and live, and 
serve and succor every shipwrecked wretch we 
find. Only, brother, never think again you were 


62 


yOA// THE MAID, 


the first to try and set the wrongs of the world 
right, or that you will be the last ; and remember 
to pray God to forgive us, and me.” 

So I went and received the blessed Sacra- 
ment, and forgave, and prayed to be forgiven. 
And meantime, in one far-off valley, though we 
knew it not, the King was filling one peasant 
child with His love, and moulding her into His 
likeness, and training her to help forward His 
kingdom among men. 


CHAPTER IV. 


percival’s story 

I T was a terrible day when our father was 
brought home from the chase, bleeding and 
stunned, and all the household gatheied wailing 
around him, thinking him smitten to death, if 
not dead. 

From the blow on the head, which nuide him 
unconscious, he soon recovered, but his horse, 
in leaping the fence over which he fell, had fallen 
on him, and his thigh was broken, and there were 
no leeches with us skilful enough to set the 
broken bone fairly, and from the first he said he 
should not live, and but for his sins and his chil- 
dren, was Content to die. 

“To you, my children,” he said, “ the loss 
may be gain. My sister Griselda and Sir Rich- 
ard will be a better friend for lads than I. And 
as to my sins, they would scarce have grown less 
by living.” 

From the time he was stricken, my father — 
the father of our mother’s days — seemed to come 
back to us. It seemed as if the blow smote 


64 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


away a mask of ice which had been forming over 
him, and his true self came out again. 

He spoke little of himself, unless indeed in 
shrift to Father Adam ; and Father Adam said 
never man made a clearer shrift with a more 
broken heart. 

He spoke much of our mother. He had his 
couch moved where he could see her crucifix, 
and the picture, and the far-offline of the sea. 

“ They wanted me to say it was good she 
should be taken away,” he said, “and I never 
would or could. She was taken from me by 
heaven in judgment, not in mercy. But this is 
in mercy, the severe mercy of love, and I am 
content. For, ever since she left, I have been 
like a lost spirit in hell — in fires that were de- 
stroying, destroying not the evil in me, but me. 
And any fire would be sunshine compared with 
that.” 

And so he seemed to have a kind of pleasure 
in his pains, in the torture of the broTcen bones 
and the rough remedies. The hasty irritability 
which had terrified us since our mother’s death 
passed away. His old smile came back. He 
made little jests about his pains, and the blun- 
ders of the bewildered leech, and his boys’ awk- 
ward nursing, and was pleased with all we did, 
and never murmured, and seemed to rest on his 
bed of pain as on a couch of roses. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 6$ 

Which Father Adam said (knowing his shrift) 
was quite natural. 

For it meant simply that his whole being had 
ceased to fight against the Almighty, and had 
sunk dowm to rest on the will of God. 

Wherefore, in looking back on those dying 
hours of our father, we look back on them, not 
as on a time of darkness and confusion, but of 
returning life and peace, as of his coming back 
to us for a while to cheer and strengthen us, 
before he left us on a long and not sorrowful 
journey. 

And the last night, before his mind began to 
wander, he called me to him and said, uncon- 
sciously almost echoing her words, 

“ Percival, take care of themy 

And then he added words of fond father’s 
pride, as if he felt that I had, more than any- 
thing, continued to him Our mother’s presence 
upon earth, and kept the gate open for him to 
come back, as now he said he had. 

I could not see how. I had blundered in so 
many ways, and feared I was often like a feeble 
jet of cold water, rather kindling up the fires I 
could not check. 

But he said it was not so. He said I had 
kept the sense of what she loved and hated ever 
before his reluctant eyes, so that when the mighty 
hand of God smote away the evil, he was left, 


66 


yOAN THE MAID. 


not in a blank horror of great darkness, but with 
her dear face and the holy thorn-crowned Face, 
shining on him, and the hope of being made one 
day, at any cost, like her and like Him. 

For saying nothing, for doing so little, only 
for loving and trying, God, who giveth freely, 
gave this imperishable joy to me ! 

Not quite, then, had he suffered me to fail or 
betray her last behest. And so it was sealed to 
me once more from sacred dying lips. 

Not to be taken care of^ but to take care ; not 
to be ministered unto^ but to minister. And then 
our father died, and we passed on to other stages. 

It was our father’s will that we should leave 
his castle and go to live with his sister Griselda 
and her husband. Sir Richard de Danescombe, 
in the neighboring county. 

The partings were hard to me, having in my 
soul so much of the slow nature of plants and 
vegetating creatures that take root, and strike 
down deep, and cannot be uprooted from any- 
thing without being torn in their living fibres. 
And yet the castle had to me been a place of 
much combat and pain. 

Whereas to Owen, having more of the bird 
that migrates than of the plant that roots, in 
him, although the castle had been to him a place 
of delight and triumph, hero as he was of the 
chase and the coast, the parting seemed nothing 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 6 / 

to the hope of striking into the new fields of ad- 
venture and pleasure and conapanionship. 

He met the tears and lamentations of those 
wko grieved to lose him, not with coldness and 
apathy, but with an overpowering sunshine of 
promise and hope, as if he would carry them 
with him, going on a quest whence, in some un- 
explained way, he would come back to enrich 
and glorify them all ; whereas Elaine, being a 
girl, could only weep, leaving a fragment of her 
heart with the familiar people, and even things ; 
and I, being a boy, and not choosing to weep, 
could only be silent or give some mute sign of 
regret and affection, like a dumb beast. 

We two went as exiles from all the world we 
loved and knew ; Owen as a conqueror promis- 
ing new kingdoms, and a discoverer looking for 
new worlds. 

And yet I think our grief cheered those we 
parted from more than Owen’s promises. 


CHAPTER V. 


ELAINE’S STORY 

I T was indeed a new world we went to when 
we left the castle for the manor, though a 
day’s riding brought us to it. For the first time 
we saw towns, fair manors and lordly abbeys. 
And in seeing this new world it seemed as if for 
the first time I learned to see the old. 

The places familiar to us from childhood 
seem scarcely known to us, any more than our 
own faces, until we see them in the mirror of 
contrast. 

It seemed coming into another age as well as 
into another world. The very language of the 
common people was different. Most on our 
coast spoke a tongue akin to the Welsh ; the 
wild fishers’ chants were the music of another 
race. 

Owen was delighted with everything. It was 
coming from a barbarous land, he said, to see the 
large, well-caparisoned horses, instead of our wild 
mountain ponies, the gay dresses of the burgh- 
ers, the games they played at. While, on the 
other hand, we two young barbarians, Percival 


ELAINES STORY, 


69 


and I, deemed it a point of loyalty to prefer the 
old familiar things and ways and men to the new. 

I remember, as we rode through Abbot’s 
Weir, seeing the men of the town, old and young, 
playing on the green at a game with balls ; and 
Owen stopped and watched eagerly, and our 
uncle’s ancient serving-man who guided us said, 
“You do not play that in your country?” 
And Percival made answer, 

“No; in our country we have winds and 
waves to play with, and do not need toys. And 
if men need play they wrestle with each other.” 

“ Then what do the boys play at ?” said the 
old man, somewhat nettled. 

“ The boys learn to be men,” said Percival. 
At which the old servant smiled and said, 

“ Learn as fast as thou canst, my master ; but 
thou hast also to grow'' 

Whereupon Percival, fearing he had spoken 
boastingly, and as becomes not youth, with that 
rare smile of his which is worth more than all the 
lavish smiles, on gay faces, gave answer, 

“ Thou wilt help us to learn, and God will 
help us to grow.” 

Such a strange weight of care lay on Percival 
in those early days ! 

We must have been strange, grave children 
in those days, we two. Percival had borne such 
a load of care since our mother died, and he be- 


70 


yOAN THE MAID. 


gan to stand between us and the world. And 1 
had heard so much of the wrongs of the common 
people from Peter, and so much of the failure 
and death of good things from him and Father 
Adam, who had taught me two hymns in Latin 
which he said were the dirges of the world ; and 
I myself had also known so terribly near what 
death and dirges meant, that it seemed to me 
we were living on the side of one of those burn- 
ing mountains the Crusaders told of ; as if life 
were behind us, and a world melting into ashes 
in the Day of Wrath before us, and we living in 
a world of tombs between the two. 

“ Dies irce, dies ilia' lay before us ; the evil 
world in these latest days around us. The King 
indeed was living, but the Kingdom was broken 
and the world dying. 

But when we came to Danescombe Manor all 
these questionings and wonderings for the time 
vanished from me. 

Danescombe was a fair and pleasant manor- 
house little more than a century old. There 
were wainscoted chambers in it, with oaken sides, 
and floors that shone like a mirror. And inside 
I had to sit still under the rule of my aunt Gris- 
elda, and broider and spin among her maidens 
with our sweet cousin Cecilie. And outside the 
boys had to follow my uncle and be trained in 
all knightly exercises, and to ride daily to the 


ELAINES STOR Y, 


71 


Benedictine abbey at Abbot’s Weir to learn 
Latin and music ; and we all were chidden and 
snibben like any other lads and lasses, and had 
no leisure for thinking about the Ages. 

And Cecilie and I had our bed-chamber, with 
two little beds covered with snow-white linen, 
fragrant from being folded in lavender. And 
roses and jessamine grew outside our two small 
windows and looked in. 

And when once I told Cecilie about this 
dreadful thought of our living in a world of 
tombs, she laughed and said, 

“ I do not, nor do the swallows, or the thrush- 
es. Is not there a May every year for every one ? 
And for me it seems always, always May ; and 
now I have you three to sing with, the world 
seems running over with life, like the little spring 
under our windows, where the birds come to 
drink. The world is so glad, and all the fair 
things in it are so dear and near, I used to long- 
just to take it all to my heart, close, close. I 
used, so foolish was I, to kneel down and kiss the 
snowdrops and the lilies, though I scarcely need- 
ed to stoop to the dear Queen lilies. And I used 
to throw my arms around the great, rough old 
trees and kiss them ; and made such merriment 
with their baby leaves, and I had such a quantity 
of love to give. But now I have you to hug and 
kiss , yon, you,” she said, “ dear, grave Princess 


72 


yOA.V THE MAID. 


Elaine, and the trees and flowers will not be 
jealous: for they knew all the time what I want- 
ed, and they are laughing and whispering to 
each other all day, ‘ We are so glad our little 
lady has found her sister! We are glad ! we are 
glad ! ’ ” 

And so, for the first time since our mother’s 
death, I became altogether a child. 

And the Ages and the Nations went and 
stood afar off, while I clasped the present mo- 
ment and Cecilie, and loved. 

The present moment, and God. 

For Cecilie never seemed to feel I was differ- 
ent from other children. She wrapped me round 
in such folds of love, and she expected me to 
laugh and be glad, as she was ; and I loved her 
and was glad without trying. 

Her beauty was sunshine to me, and seemed 
something of my own. 

And I had also one treasure to give Cecilie, 
which was new to her. She had a book, and 
could read, and taught me ; an English book 
just like herself, all life, and open-air, and joy, 
and movement, and May; the book of the Can- 
terbury Pilgrims, by Chaucer. And I had a 
Book, though I had never seen it and could not 
read, written on my mind by Peter’s telling, a 
Book also of the fields and the open-air, about 
stars, and lilies, and boats, and wild winds, and 


ELAINE'S STORY. 


73 


seas made quiet as tame lambs by the Voice they 
knew. 

And dark and sorrowful as were many of the 
stories in my Book, they did not make us sad. 
They were only dark as winter and night, and 
seeds buried in the earth are dark. The summer 
and the day and the harvest were only hidden in 
that winter and night and sorrow. 

For the Sun of that Story had really risen, 
we knew, never more to set, and was shining on 
us, in flowers, and trees, and mornings, and stars, 
and home, and father, and mother, and brothers, 
and everything that made us glad. 

And I often felt as if underneath all the mirth 
of her Chaucer was a sigh ; and underneath all 
the sadness of my Book a song. 


CHAPTER VI. 
percival’s story. 



ES, it was a new world and a new life we 


A came into at Danescombe ; to me, perhaps, 
more than to any one. 

The weight of care dropped off from me. I 
had to be a boy among boys, to learn, to obey, 
to submit, to be ruled, and for the first time since 
my mother’s death I felt what it was to be young, 
almost what it was to live. For I had grown 
scarcely to have a life of my own, so hard had 
that charge of caring for the others proved as a 
yoke on my neck. 

And light indeed was the yoke of obedience 
compared with that yoke of care. 

Was this a step upward ? 

Perhaps not ; but a needful downward step 
into the common paths on the way upward it 
certainly was. And, for ever, I thank God for 
those few following natural years which made me 
as other men. 

I can think of them now with calm and joy, 
in the far-off past, and with the light of the near 
future of the new youth upon them. 


PERCIVAL’S STORY. 


75 


For looking back, even more than I knew at 
the time, I see how one thought, one presence, 
one hope filled them, and made them one May 
and spring-tide to me. 

That presence was Cecilie, our cousin Ce- 
cilie. 

And to have loved such a being as she was 
and for ever is, to have seen her in all her grace 
and truth as only love can see, is a gift which 
will enrich the heart for ever. 

I can scarcely think of her apart from the 
world she made new to me, for the vision and 
the music of her presence are blended with every- 
thing. 

Partly because she did not dwell apart in a 
regal separation from common life, waited on and 
adored, like the damsels in the Arthur legends, 
but stirred about the house and gardens, bring- 
ing freshness and beauty everywhere ; not by 
magic, but by quiet touches of dainty fingers, as 
busy as a wren about her nest ; not as a star on 
high, apart, as a pervading sunbeam everywhere 
she shines to me. 

The old manor was no fairy palace, though at 
first it seemed so to us. The linen of the house- 
hold was not spun, or .woven, or washed by 
magic ; nor was it by a word that the currants 
turned into conserves, or the flour into bread, or 
the venison into pasties. The maids had to be 


76 


PERCIVALS STORY. 


shown their work by Aunt Griselda, and helped 
in it by Cecilie. 

And thuS' she comes back to me not only 
dreaming over her Chaucer or singing to her lute. 
Though also thus I see her, with parted lips and 
that far-off look in her eyes, sitting beside Elaine, 
silent, with the story of fair Constance or of Saint 
Cecilie before them, a slight flush on her face, 
gazing into her lovely, pure dream-world, on the 
turf under the old thorn they loved, its white 
blossoms falling on her green kirtle, and Elaine 
gazing on her face as if all the beauty of all 
dreams were gathered there, as it was, for Elaine 
and me. 

And then I hear the Angelas bell from the 
little chapel in the hollow, and I see her kneel 
with downcast eyelids and bowed head, veiled in 
the waves of her soft brown hair. 

And then again I see her rise and sit beside 
Elaine, and make Elaine tell her stories from the 
Story which is no dream. 

And almost I can read the words, as I watch 
Jecilie’s face. The listening lips quiver now and 
then as something moves her, and then close as 
with deep and holy purpose, the eyes no more 
^ague with pure and delicious dreams, but deep 
and fixed, as if with the vision of the Face which, 
as I look on her, I almost seem to see, feeling 
what she sees. 


yOAN THE MAID, 


77 


But for the most part I think of her in move- 
ment, maki.ig a pastime among the maidens of 
the work she shared, telling them stories as she 
moved to and fro with her distaff, or teaching 
them choruses to her songs ; humming like a 
happy bee as she gathered herbs in the garden, 
or spread them to dry in the parlor-chamber. 

And so, like all the beauty of the natural 
things she lived among, she came into my heart, 
and took possession, and reigned. At first, as 
a sister, unsuspected and unwelcomed as a child. 
She was scarce sixteen, a year older than Elaine, 
a year younger than Owen, and three years 
younger than I. 

It grew worth while to excel in all manly ex- 
ercises and games, not so much to please as to 
protect her. 

To guard her from word or look that coyld 
grieve her became second nature. 

So she came into my heart, as a helpless 
child, and before I was aware, she was reigning 
as a queen. 

I never had a purpose in life but her quiet 
pleasure in it was the reward. 

She was so easy and yet so hard to please ; 
pleased with the least gift of the humblest, yet 
never to be pleased, in herself, or in any, but with 
their best. 

The smallest act of habitual service from a 


78 


PERCIVAVS Sl’ORY. 


servant never became a dull matter oi course to 
her. The inspiration of her thanks and her smile 
pervaded the common household toil, not from 
policy, but because she always felt herself natu- 
rally every one’s servant, and every service to her 
as a free gift. 

And yet, for a work to please her, to give 
pleasure, it must be as near perfection as possi- 
ble. Every blundering step upward won her 
sympathy ; but to satisfy her you must scale the 
height. 

And so, unconsciously, she drew us on in 
horsemanship, in feats of arms, even in clothes, 
and carriage, and tones, and words ; not so much 
that she might be pleased with us, as that we 
might give her pleasure. 

At least, so it was with me. 

With Owen .she found little fault, and of all 
the little circle he seemed to care least about her 
pleasure. Graceful and courteous he was by na- 
ture, with an instinct for finding out what pleased 
every one in little things. But with Cecilie it 
seemed that he was more intent on demanding 
than on pleasing or serving her. 

Once I remember bringing home antlers of 
the red deer as a trophy of the chase to her. 
She received the gift graciously, as always, 
but instantly her eyes glanced past me to 
Owen. 


PER CIV AES S TOR Y. 79 

“ How could you let him be wounded ?’ she 
said indignantly. 

His hand was bleeding, and darting into the 
house, in a minute she returned with a soft ker- 
chief of her own, and bound up his wound. 

I felt rebuked. The old sacred charge, 
“ Take care of them all T' came back to me. 
Yet I was not grieved. I thought she was only 
demanding that she should share the care which 
was my sacred commission. 

I never contemplated life or duty or delight 
except as doubled and shared by her. 

Then we went, by my uncle’s will, Owen 
and I, to complete our knightly training in a 
nobleman’s house not far away. 

To me it was banishment, but to Owen the 
new life was unmixed delight, and he took no 
pains to feign that it was otherwise. 

Yet when we parted, Cecilie gave me a cous- 
inly kiss and a smile, and seemed not to know 
how hard it was to me to keep back tears. 
But when she parted from Owen, he smiled, 
even laughed, and looked back to her with a 
gay gesture ; yet when I looked back she had 
turned pale and the tears filled her eyes. 

Owen rode gayly on, humming a French lay 
but an irresistible impulse drew me back to her. 

And with quivering lips she only said, 

“ Take care of him.” 


8o 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


Still I thought she meant to make my moth- 
er’s words her own, and was only saying, 

‘‘ We will take care of him together, thou 
and I ; of Owen, and Elaine, and every one 
around us whom we can rescue and succor to- 
gether, thou and I.’’ 

We were away many months, and I learned 
to write like a clerk, to send her messages, to 
herself, or through Elaine. 

And Elaine said she watched for these words 
and treasured them and read them over and 
over. 

It was true they were mostly about Owen, 
and the care I thought she was sharing with 
me. And of course I only told her the good 
about him, the charm he had for every one, from 
the lady of the castle to the little maid at the 
porter.’s lodge. I did not tell her of the orphan 
niece of the chatelaine, gentle and grave and 
sweet, to whom he could not help devoting him- 
self with that devotion of the moment which had 
such a perilous charm for such as did not know 
the moment before. 

How could he help it if all his heart went 
into his eyes, those southern eyes of our moth- 
er’s with their long lashes and their intensity, 
and their sudden flashes as from fire-depths 
within ? 

Nor did I tell her how I saw the young 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


Si 


maiden grow pale and wan when another damsel, 
bright as morning and gay as a French chanson, 
drew Owen away into her world of laughter and 
song and life. 

Taking care of Owen was not such an easy 
task, but taking care of the wounded in his 
tournaments was certainly beyond any mortal 
power. 

But when we came home again, the veil had 
soon enough to be torn from my heart. 

Me she welcomed as a comrade who shared 
a thousand interests with her. She remember- 
ed every detail of the life we had been leading, 
had forgotten no hint or syllable of my letters. 
She took me to see all her cherished treasures : 
the hare I had tamed for her, the birds I had 
caught for her, the garden we had dug together, 
the Chaucer we had read together. 

And the great bloodhound I had trained for 
her had become her constant companion and 
guide. 

And Owen brought her nothing, and seemed 
even to have forgotten the familiar ways and 
places ; and they seemed to have little to say to 
each other, and scarcely even looked at each 
other. 

It was the family purpose that we two should 
wed, and it was my uncle’s determination that 
Owen and I should go for a while to the French 
4 * 


82 


yOAN’ THE MAID, 


wars, to see a little of the real game, he said, be- 
fore we settled into our quiet corner of the world, 
to take the place of the elders. 

I began to think the day was coming when 
I might speak to Cecilie of this, if further speech 
were needed. And at last I became sure the 
moment had come. 

It was a fair evening in early spring, the hour 
she was wont to spend with Elaine, after the 
work of the day (for hers were working days), 
under the thicket of old thorns on the slope. 

The sunset lingered there, and the leaves 
were already full enough to make a shelter. 
Elaine was still busy at some task of my aunt’s, 
but she told me she thought Cecilie was waiting 
for her under the thorn thicket. 

I went with a beating heart, certainly, yet 
with a joyous calm ; more as if I were going to 
the sacrament of marriage, the perpetual sacra- 
ment she was, I trusted, to make all common 
life to me. 

There were voices under the thorns as I 
drew near, low and clear. 

One was Cecilie’s. 

“ I will do what my father and mother will, 
and I will never grieve him, if my heart were to 
break.” 

But he only cares for you as he cafes for 
me and for Elaine, and for all of us. It is hb 


PERCIVALS STORY. 


83 


charge from my mother and my father He 
was always as good as a priest. He does not 
seek anything or any one for himself.” 

“ You think so ? ” she said, and a joyous ac- 
cent of conviction came into her voice. “Yes, 
it must be so ! Truest brother and truest 
friend ! ” 

“ True as heaven ! ” was the reply, “ and 
wanting nothing. But I am selfish and poor, 
and want thee. And none will rejoice over us 
more than Percival.” 

“ If I could be quite sure !” she said. 

“ We will be quite sure to-morrow, my be- 
loved, ” he said, “ for I will tell him. ” 

“ Not a word,” she said, “ until I give thee 
leave.” 

And then, numb and deaf and blind, 1 turned 
away, and heard no more. 

“ Traitor !” I thought. He knew ! he 
must have known. Shall I yield her to a heart 
whose love is as a baby’s fancy compared with 
mine?- I who could and would shield her from 
all the world !” 

But before I reached the little garden at the 
bottom of the slope, Cecilie’s little flower-border 
by the garden of herbs, the irrevocable certainty 
became clear to me. 

“ She loves him ; she is his.” And then, as 
in my mother’s voice the old charge, “ Take care 


84 


JOAN THE MAID. 


of Owen. ” My mother would be satisfied for 
him, I thought. “ For me it is over ; life is 
over. All is over but the charge from which I 
should never have strayed. And Cecilie shall 
never know.” 

As I crossed the garden, the light footsteps I 
should have known in my sleep, in madness, in 
death, if they had trodden on my grave, came 
along the path to me, and the soft hand was laid 
on my arm. 

“ Percival,” she said, “ Owen has been saying 
something to me, and you are our — my best 
friend.” 

And, thank God, I had courage to look 
down straight into the frank, childlike eyes, and 
to take her hands, and lay them for a moment 
on my lips and say, 

“ Sister Cecilie, you and Owen shall always, 
so help me God. -find me your true brother and 
friend.” 

We said no more, only by a sudden move- 
ment she took ny two hands and pressed them 
on her cheek, ^nd said, with a ring of joy and 
gratitude in her voice, always to me like a lark’s 
song, 

“Brother! Yes, really brother; my very 
own brother. That doubles the happiness.” 

And from that day to this she never guessed. 
Thank God I she has never guessed. 


PERCIVALS STORY. 85 

And so the anguish was all entirely my own^ 
and I was able to be a true brother to them. 

My uncle made some demur. He said he 
had thought Cecilie and me made for each 
other. Also he did not see how the younger son 
would fit in as well for the inheritance. 

I could make no promises. For one reason, 
I dared not tell the truth, that my life secured 
the whole inheritance to them as much as that 
of a vowed priest ; and, for another, I thought 
Jacob might take better care of the birthright 
for Esau, than Esau for himself. 

Yet I said enough to make the old man 
easy. And my aunt made no difficulty ; she 
said she had rather it had been me, but she 
had read her daughter’s heart. 

And thus Owen and Cecilie solemnly pledged 
their troth, and we went to the French wars 
with a small band of retainers, and Peter the 
Wright as armorer, reluctant enough to go, 
and declaring he went only to save English lives, 
not to slay French peasants. 

I One thin^, I remember, woke me up with a 
pang of remorse before we left, and that was the 
pale, careworn face of our little sister Elaine. 

The week before we left I found her weep- 
ing alone in the chapel by the river. She, 
usually so patient, sobbed like an unreasonable 
child. 


86 


THE MAID. 


Brother ! brother Percival !” she cried. 

Could not the good God take my life ? What 
is life without thee?” 

And looking, I saw that the sorrow in her 
face was not as the sudden overflow of a tem- 
pest, but as the furrows worn by a winter’s rains. 
“ Brother, ” she said, ‘‘ you will care for every 
one but yourself, and they will let you die. And 
in all the world there is no one like you, for me 
or for any one, if they only knew it as I know — 
as I know.” And she sobbed passionately. 
And I, buried in my own loss, God forgive me ! 
did not guess that she, having guessed it, was 
grieving, not for her sorrow, but-for mine. 

And I remember a fearful feeling of perverse 
recoil from her affection seized me, like a de- 
moniacal possession, as if she had in some dim, 
half-conscious way felt my secret, felt that the 
heart which had gone so wholly to Cecilie was 
rejected and thrown back again on itself, and 
might be hers again, hers more than ever, to 
bind up and solace. Poor, solitary child, whose 
sorrow it was that she must always be as a child ! 

And, with the irritable perversity of new 
grief, I recoiled from imagining that she imag- 
ined she or any one could ever fill the blank or 
heal the wound. 

I should have loved Elaine and every one a 
hundredfold more if Cecilie had loved me. The 


PERCIVALS STORY, 


8 ; 


few scattered embers of that hearth-fire had 
been warmer than the whole fire could be now. 
It was my heart itself, not a dream of delight, 
that had died on losing her. And the child s 
tenderness was a jar and a pain to me, until I 
saw that the poor crumbs I had left for her 
made her glad, and the timid, silent affection, 
almost like a dog’s, crept slowly into my heart 
and shed a little autumnal warmth there. 

And the joy of giving happiness woke once 
more, and I began to live again ; and I promised 
her, when we went to the wars, to try hard to 
live, which I had not hitherto meant. 

But as I had promised it, I did mean it, and 
almost began to wish it once more. For else, 
what would the poor little sister do? 

So the battle was won; but the land wis not 
yet conquered. 

I had accepted my fate and resign .-d my 

life. 

I was driven back to my place, to take care 
of the rest. 

I made no vows, but I knew as well as if I 
had spoken them that love and the joy of mar- 
riage was ever behind me. Behind me, not below 
me I never deluded myself with that dream. 
Above all I could vow or dream would have 
been that double life of love and care, feeding 
the sacred flocks together. 


88 


THE MAID. 


Above all I could aspire to, but also surely as 
far above the life Owen could give her. 

If she had rejected him, he would have so- 
laced himself so easily, would have entered so 
gayly, without a pang, into my joy, would have 
won, and perhaps broken, so many hearts, and 
at last been won by one whom he (with full 
conviction) would have charmed into the per- 
suasion she was the first he had ever truly 
loved ! 

And Cecilie, would the heart she had won be 
true to her, true from its lightest surface ripple 
to its deepest depths, with a constancy such as 
a heart like hers deserved ancf needed? 

And if not, if such a dire possibility of 
change, so probable, came to be, would it not 
be something for her to have a heart that could 
not change to her, that would find its bliss in 
binding up the wounds of hers? Folly! — folly 
and treachery even in the momentary thought ! 

Because her heart was of that unchangeable, 
slow kind, like mine, there was no solace, no 
second love possible to her. 

And therefore the only way to serve Cecilie 
was to serve Owen, to love and guard and 
watch over him, and help him to be his best, to 
be the Owen she dreamed and loved, who must 
be the true, possible Owen, since she so loved 
him for she was too true to love anything but 


PERCIVArS STORY. 


89 


truth ; and therefore her dream of him was the 
truth, a divine dream, a vision of the Owen who 
was to be, whom, so help me God, I would help 
to be. 

And so we went forth, Owen and I, and our 
little band of retainers, men-at-arms, and archers, 
to join the armies of England, to swell the tide 
which for nearly a hundred years had been dash- 
ing on the shores of France. 

It is something to be swept out from our lit- 
tle rills and our rivers into such a tide, to feel 
the thrill of national life, even though it be 
through the shock of encounter with a foe. 

We did not question much for whom or what 
we fought. We went as Englishmen against 
the French. Three centuries before, a few 
thousand Frenchmen from Normandy had con- 
quered England. We went back to conquer 
France, partly as descendants of Normans and 
Angevins, to possess our fathers’ lands, partly as 
descendants of the Saxons, to avenge our fath- 
ers’ wrongs ; but chiefly; as a matter of course, 
because England was at war with France, be- 
cause our great king Henry the Fifth, a few years 
since, dying in the full flood of the conquest, 
had left on England the necessity of continuing 
his victories. 

To fight the French was as natural and 
necessary to us as to fight the weeds that strug- 


90 


yOAN THE MAID. 


gled with our crops, the winds that battled with 
our ships ; as to fight heresy or rebellion, or the 
world, the flesh, and the devil, or any foe which 
endangered our life. 

We went to mass before we sailed ; we went 
to mass the first possible moment after we land- 
ed. We were as sure we were fighting with God 
on our side as if w^e had been defending Cecilie 
and Elaine from pirates in the old castle by 
the western sea. 

And, moreover, had not the God of Battles 
plainly declared Himself on our side? 

Since the great battle of Agincourt, where 
our brave archers, under Henr)? the King, had 
broken down the chivalry of France, there had 
been the great battle of Verneuil, and countless 
other small skirmishes, so that the terror of us was 
on all the land, and ten thousand would flee at 
the rebuke of one. Besides, was not France our 
owm ? our dead king’s by right of conquest and 
marriage with Catharine ? our child-king’s by 
right of inheritance ? 

We were but deliverers (of France herself, if 
she could see it) ; deliverers from weak and wick- 
ed princes and queens, who assassinated each 
other, and left the people to perish. 

What indeed was France but a name ? One 
portion of it was Burgundian ; more than half 
was already English ; Normandy, and Paris, and 


PERCIVAVS STOP Y. 


91 


Guienne, and Aquitaine. A few more blows, 
and the work would be done, and that distracted 
land would be ruled from Westminster. 

We landed in Normandy, full of hope, and 
courage. It was meet we should have our share 
in our country’s conflict. 

And yet a misgiving came on me for a 
moment the first day we landed. We were 
marching through a ruined village. There was 
silence in the fields as if it had been Sunday, 
and all the people at mass ; but the little church 
was burnt, and the cottages black and charred, 
and we saw no one but a little boy drawing 
water at the village well. 

And he tried to fly, but was detained by our 
thirsty men, and made to fill his pitcher again 
and again. 

He answered nothing to their rough but not 
unkindly jests, only stared, with eyes starting 
out of his head with terror. 

But when I said a few words to him in French, 
the strained features relaxed, and he burst into 
tears and caught hold of my clothes and entreat- 
ed me to save him, in my mother’s tongue, in 
accents which I had heard last from her lips. 

While the men were halting for a brief rest, 
I went off with the little lad and saw him safe 
to a little wooded hollow, quiet and pleasant, 
like the valley of Danescombe. And there I 


92 


yOAN THE MAID. 


saw him welcomed and embraced and wept over 
by an old man and two frightened women, who 
took him into the shelter of a little half-burnt 
shed, which was all that remained of a large 
range of farm-buildings. 

One tame old goat, the only remnant of the 
flocks and herds, was wandering about the 
ruins, and ran helplessly up to me, like a crea- 
ture used to be caressed. 

It was nothing compared to the horrors we 
saw day by day afterwards, but those were in 
the heat of combat, when our blood was up, and 
once more it became a duel between England 
and France, and that little lad, the old man, the 
frightened women, the solitary goat, broke up 
the picture from nations into individual men and 
women and little children of the same flesh and 
blood with ourselves. 

And then, for me, there was the instinctive 
tenderness for the old mother-tongue. 

It was a proud thing to ride through the 
country whence the old conquerors had come, 
as conquerors and possessors, in our turn. 

The cities were all ours, at all events, and 
English watchwords opened us all the gates and 
found us welcome in every garrisoned place. 

Stately old cities, with churches like our own, 
built many of them by our forefathers. 

We felt at home in these. Yet in truth we 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


93 


could not stir outside them without feeling we 
were in a land of strangers and foes, and that to 
us the cities were mere camps. 

When the whole was ours, I thought, no 
doubt it would be different. Then the French 
would submit as we had submitted, and we 
should be one nation. I said so one day to 
Peter the W right, but he was very grim and not 
very hopeful. 

“One nation,” said he, “like the English; 
A nation of whom ? Where are those old 
Normans and their language now? We are 
all English. Shall the end of all this waste of 
English blood be that we become Frenchmen, 
and talk through our noses, and scream at the 
top of our voices like these poor ignorant creatures 
here? And meantime, what will England be?” 

“ The same as now,” he added mournfully, 
answering himself. “ Perhaps only the same as 
now. You see English and French everywhere, 
young master. Some of us see peasant and noble 
everywhere, and eveiy’-where the nobles reaping 
the spoils and the peasants shedding their blood. 
For the nobles, jousts and feastings, ransoms 
taken or given. For the peasants toil and sweat, 
and fire, and no ransom and no quarter, and no 
pay. Little difference between France and 
England for us, little difference between peace 
and war. In peace we till your lands with the 


94 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


sweat of our brow ; in war we feed your lands 
with our unheeded blood. But it cries to God 
from the dust,” he concluded, “ it cries to God !” 

Thus it happened that many a misgiving 
came to me. It was so clear, moreover, that 
most of the men of gentle blood, such as our- 
selves, had come, not for England or for the 
King, but for plunder and for pelf. 

Many a time the fruits of a battle won with 
precious life-blood were lost, because the victors 
chose to disperse for plunder, sacking towns, or 
lading themselves with the poor treasures of the 
peasants — “ murdered peasants,” as Peter called 
them. It was hard to answer Jiim. 

But the war went on till scarce one province 
was left to the weak Dauphin, amusing himself all 
the while, we heard, among his courtiers in the 
Loire country, near Bourges. 

If only this foolish France would wake and 
see the facts, and let us and our king have our 
rights, it might soon be over, I tried to think, and 
she at least be better ruled than now. 

So the autumn and winter passed. Owen 
and I had won our spurs ; and he at least was 
torn asunder by no scruples. 

He went into battle as gayly as if he 
rode to a tournament, and seemed to care as 
little about peril or death, or slaying, as if it 
had been a chase of wild boars by Tintagel. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 95 

It was fencing with a meaning, gambling for 
the highest stakes of life and death ; it was l 
chase of the noblest game man can hunt. 

In the battle itself, it was the same with me ; 
and besides, there was always Owen to stand by, 
and many a time to rescue from some desperate 
peril. And between Owen and a thousand 
Frenchmen, of course there was no choice for 
me. There is, moreover, a fearful joy in th^ 
battle-field. The highest and the deepest, as 
well as the lowest and worst, are stirred within 
us. We were meant to be warriors, if only it 
could be in the great knightly warfare for all the 
weak against all wrongs. 

And surely, I thought, this war must be 
drawing to its close. The land could scarce bear 
much more wasting and depopulating. 

Many of our marches lay through deserts, 
deserts which a few months before had been 
fruitful fields. We had to bring our food from 
afar, through the wasted corn-fields, and the 
meadows stripped of cattle, and the vineyards 
burnt black. 

And at length it seemed as if there were but 
one more stronghold to overcome. 

Only Orleans ! Only let Orleans be ours, 
and all was ours. The son of the French princess 
would be crowned at Rheims, the court of the 
Dauphin (so-called) would vanish like the spell- 


96 


yOAAT THE MAID. 


bound hall of idle enchantments it was, thd 
war would be over and France and England free- 

Already our little besieging army of ten thou- 
sand were keeping the besieged within the wall? 
of the city. Our forts and bastiles were encir- 
cling it. Already, of the three Furies whom 
Henry the Fifth called the three hand-maidens 
of war — fire, blood, and famine — famine, which 
he called the meekest, was threatening the 
citizens. 

Already the citizens themselves had levelled 
the pleasant homesteads in the environs, laid 
waste the fields, burnt the orchards, made a de- 
fensive girdle of ruin around them. 

Who could say how soon, as at Rouen, the 
garrison would be driven to turn the women and 
children and old men outside the gates to perish 
under the walls between the two armies ? 

Willingly we obeyed the summons to join a 
company of sixteen hundred men-at-arms and 
archers who were to convoy some hundred carts 
of provisions (bread and wine, and also salt her- 
rings, for it was Lent) to supply the besieging 
force. 

We were but sixteen hundred. At a short 
distance from Orleans an army of six thousand 
came against us, Scots and Frenchmen. In 
those days (at least, so we boasted), one English- 
man never thought of fleeing from four French- 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 97 

men, and these traitor Scots only put us more 
on our mettle. 

Sir John Fastolfe made a fortification of his 
carts, and filled up the openings with archers. 

The Scots came .bravely against us and fell 
by hundreds, smitten by the old English aim 
which won us Agincourt and so many a field. 

Six hundred of them lay dead on the field 
around the wagons. 

And as they lay dead, we felt a kind of pride 
in the old island that had brought forth these 
also. 

And the French fled. What were six thou- 
sand of these to as many hundreds of ours ^ 
And so the “ Battle of the Herrings” was won, 
and our countrymen were provisioned, the little 
band of our countrymen. For when we came, 
the ten thousand besiegers were reduced to three 
or four thousand ; those of Burgundy had with- 
drawn, and none but Englishmen remained in- 
vesting the place. 

Better so, we thought in our confidence. The 
glory would be all ours, and the prize. 

For already the town, hopeless of aid from 
her dauphin, who remained shut up m his castle 
at Chinon, had made offers of surrender. 

The end seemed indeed drawing nigh ; — 
when suddenly, in the distance there began to 
be a low stirring of rumors, as when, under the 
5 


98 


yOAiV THE MAID. 


summer sky, the leaves rustle before a thunder, 
storm. 

A peasant-girl, a maid from the borders of 
Burgundy, had come clad in armor to the- dau- 
phin, to him they called the king, at Chinon, and 
had promised to save Orleans from the English, 
and to have him crowned in the great minster 
at Rheims. 

We laughed in our forts and by the camp- 
fires over the childish dream. There had indeed 
been some prophecy, it was said, about France 
being lost by a wicked woman (such as Isabel the 
queen) and saved by a pure maiden. 

Yet there was a secret terror underneath the 
laughter. For that there were sorcerers and 
sorceresses, every one knew. 

Had not Eleanor Cobham, wife of the Duke 
of Gloucester, been condemned and compelled 
to do public penance in the streets of London 
for attempting magic against the young king’s 
life? 

Whatever was doubtful (and the Lollards 
and the evil lives of monk and friar had made 
much doubtful to many of us), no one had any 
doubt of witchcraft. And who could say what 
the devil (who must naturally hate England) 
might attempt, in the last resort against our 
arms, now that all honest means had failed ? 

There was not much leisure, however, for 


PERCIVALS STORY. 


99 


listening to rumors. The departure of the Bur- 
gundian allies had left double work on our men 
in guarding the forts and the bulwarks of earth 
which connected them. All the roads had to be 
guarded night and day, and also the river, lest 
provisions should be introduced into the city. 
And, moreover, new forts and bulwarks were 
being raised to make the encircling line of the 
siege complete. And those already erected near 
the river had also to be watched and defended 
against the rising of the water ; for it was late 
in April, the spring rains had flooded the hill 
torrents at the sources of the river, and the Loire 
swept down in full stream, undermining her 
banks. 

Gentle and simple, noble and peasant, man- 
at-arms and archer, had to work hard at the 
trenches and forts. Skill of hand and strength 
of arm, and the eye of the trained workman, such 
as Peter the Wright, came to be counted at 
their true value. The poverty which had com- 
pelled men to be powers themselves, and use 
their own hands and eyes, many a time had the 
lead of the riches which had enabled men to use 
the hands and eyes of others. Pride had many 
a blow, and the brotherhood of toil and peril 
brought us close to many we should have known 
but afar-offin days of peace. For surely, some- 
thing there is, in truth, in this terrible scourge of 


iOO 


yOAN THE MAID. 


war which smites nations into unity and com- 
pels prince and peer to remember they are first 
of all men. 

We were resting together after a hard day's 
toil, Peter and Owen and I, when the first mes- 
senger came from the Maid. 

The bearer was not recognized by our com 
mander as an honorable envoy. He was re- 
ceived with insult, kept prisoner, and theatened 
to be burned as a sorcerer as soon as the decree 
could be obtained from the University of Paris. 

But the words of the message speedily oozed 
out among the men in the forts and bulwarks. 

It was meant as a message, of peace, and was 
quite simply addressed to the King of England, 
the Earl of Suffolk, and all the lords and com- 
manders, from “ the Maid, sent hither from the 
King of heaven." “ She was ready to make 
peace," said the letter, “ if we, lords, archers, 
and men-at-arms, would go home in God’s name 
to our own country. If we would not go, will 
we, nill we, she would make us go, for she came 
from God to drive out all those who did harm to 
the kingdom of France. If we did not obey, she 
and her men-at-arms would smite, and wound, 
and slay us, so that we should see who had the 
right to France, the God of heaven or we. 
“ Not we," she said, “ but Charles, the true heir, 
held the kingdom from the King of Heaven, son 


PERCIVAVS STORY. lOl 

of St. Mary. She prayed us not to suffer our- 
selves to be destroyed, but to listen and yield, 
and then to come in her company : French and 
English Christians together^ to do the noblest 
deeds jor Christendom that had ever yet been 
do7iel' 

Together, all Christendom, all the Church, 
reconciled, repentant, rejoicing. Father Adam, 
Peter the Wright, the Popes, the Hussites, Loll- 
ards, friars, monks, princes, peasants, all togeth- 
er, to victory in some glorious war ! 

The captains swore at her and called her evil 
names, cow-herd and harlot. The bearer of the 
message, as I said, was menaced with the stake. 

Bnt none the less the words of her message 
smote on many a conscience among us, kindling 
up the memory of deeds such as paralyze men 
to think of; setting many thinking fearfully of 
the homes they had left, and the homes they 
had ruined, and questioning why they had come. 

There was much rough railing and jesting, as 
the men gathered around the fires to cook their 
rations. But the rudest words were not spoken 
by the commonalty. 

“ Cow-herd, tavern-servant, peasant-wench,” 
might be taunts from the lips of the nobles. 
They were no reproaches to the peasant-archers 
who had won so many a field, and remembered 
their wives and daughters at home. 


102 


THE MAID. 


And underneath all, like the rumble of an 
earthquake, kept recurring the old prophecy, 
“ A virgin from Burgundy shall trample the 
archers under foot.” 

I remember well one evening late in April, 
when Owen and Peter and I were keeping guard, 
while the moon threw the long shadows of our 
forts, mingled with those of the towers and 
churches of Orleans, across the river and over the 
burnt-up and desolated plain. 

Owen had been scornfully echoing the scorn- 
ful words of the men of our rank. 

“ She speaks like a queen,” he said, the 
peasant-wench. But madness, they say, in wo- 
men, commonly takes the shape of vanity. No 
doubt she struts and preens herself like poor 
crazy Guinevere of Boscastle, who thought her- 
self Queen Philippa, and made herself crowns of 
crows’ feathers. They say she rides well, having 
learnt by taking her master the innkeeper’s 
horses to water. A merry jest she must make 
in the dauphin’s court. But doubtless they are 
glad enough to take the help of any mad woman 
who will make their men fight. They say none 
of their own nobles believe in her, only those 
of the baser sort.” 

“ Nothing new in that,” growled Peter, “ for 
apostle or prophet. And to me she seems more 
like a prophetess than a queen ; a good maid 1 


PERCIVAUS STORY. 


103 


She is nothing but Joan the Maid, quoth she, 
a poor, good peasant-maid sent with a message 
from God to men. And not the first, Master 
Owen, not the first.” 

“ A good maid ?” laughed Owen. “ Nay, either 
a crazy fool, or worse, a witch and a sorceress.” 

“ They do say the young French queen, and 
the queen’s mother, and all the noble ladies who 
have seen her, declare her to be a good maid,” 
replied Peter stubbornly, as if he had been de- 
fending the good name of his own child. “And 
the priests and doctors say she is a good Chris- 
tian ; and she will not have any light woman in 
the army she leads. And on a pure maid and a 
good Christian the devil has no hold.’’ 

Owen turned fiercely on Peter. 

“ If she can bring mutiny and hesitation 
among us,” he said, “ Christian or not, she will 
do the devil’s work well. She would not leave 
an Englishman in France. ‘ Get away to your 
little island,’ says the insolent wench !” 

“ No bad fate for Englishmen to be sent back 
to England,” retorted Peter, “ to till our own 
fields instead of wasting these. And if it might 
be, if she spoke from Him she calls the King of 
Heaven,” he added with a kindling eye, “ what 
better message could she bring? ‘Cease killing 
one another, and come and let us help each other 
to save Christendom together.’ ” 


104 


yOAN- THE MAID. 


Another Crusade!” said Owen musingly. 
“ There were some meaning in that.” 

“There are more crusades than that to Jeru- 
salem, and other sepulchres besides the Holy 
S«»pulchre,” sighed Peter. “ And a peasant-maid 
might well lead us all on to such a holy war.” 

Owen laughed sleepily, and wrapping him- 
self in his cloak, said he would trust the watch 
to Peter and me. 

We said no more, but I wondered if the talk 
between us were echoed elsewhere through the 
armies, English and French. 

A deliverer whom the great ones laughed at, 
yet who gathered to herself the faith of the com- 
mon people on both sides, on one side as a saint 
and savior, on the other as a terrible sorceress 
or a mighty avenger, might do us more harm 
than all Burgundy and Spain turned against us. 

For after all it was the common people, 
the English bowmen, who had won our French 
battles. 

The next morning awoke us all to strange 
tidings. The Maid was actually on her way. 

Some thousands of Frenchmen, with a con- 
voy of provisions, had marched with her from 
Blois. 

Before mid-day they reached Orleans, but on 
the opposite side to the city. 

It was said the Maid had counselled the route 


PERCIVAIJS STORY. 


105 


on the same side of the Loire as the city, and was 
indignant at having been deceived and her mes- 
sage disobeyed. 

We heard afterwards the whole story. 

One of their greatest captains, Dunois, the 
Bastard of Orleans, came forth from the besieged 
city to meet her. 

Are you the Bastard of Orleans?” she said, 

“Yes, and I rejoice at your coming.” 

She paid no heed to the greeting. 

“ Is it you,” she said, “ who gave counsel to 
make me come hither by this side of the river and 
not straight, where Talbot and the English are?” 

Dunois replied that he, and those wiser than 
he, had given this counsel, believing thus to do 
better and more safely. 

“ In the name of God,” she said, “ the counsel 
of my King (God, “ messire') is safer and wiser 
than yours. You thought to deceive me, and 
you have been deceived yourselves. For I bring 
you better succor than any knight, town, or city 
whatever. And that is, the good pleasure of 
God, and the succor of the King of the Heavens. 
Not in any way for my sake. It proceeds purely 
from God, who, at the request of St. Louis and 
St. Charles the Great, has had pity on the town 
of Orleans, and willed not that the enemy should 
have the body of the D uke of Orleans and his 
town.” 


5 * 


I06 yOAN THE MAID. 

At that moment, as she spoke, it seemed as 
if a sign from heaven confirmed her words. The 
wind changed, so that the Orleans boats were 
able to convey the provisions she had brought 
across the river. 

A new inspiration came at once over the 
city, and a new hesitation and caution seemed 
to creep over us. 

The garrison made a sortie that evening and 
successfully kept at bay the only one of our forts 
which threatened the point of the river where 
the provisions were to cross. 

Our own men were at once drawn in from an 
outlying fort, which was abandoned. 

The French army had at once to retrace their 
steps to Blois, to return by the route the Maid 
had first counselled, which the captains had 
avoided. This grieved her much. The men of 
that little army had confessed and prayed, and 
with them, she said, she would have dared any- 
thing. “ She had come, not to provision 
Orleans, but to save it.” She sent her almoner 
and the priests with the banner of the crucifix 
back with them, while she herself remained. 

But the winds and waters seemed to fight for 
her. The waters rose, the wind bore the pro- 
vision boats safe across, and late in the evening 
the Maid herself, with two hundred lances, 
crossed the Loire. 


PEl^CIVAVS STORY. 


107 


At eight o’clock, in the dusk of the April 
evening, there was a great sound of rejoicing 
from the city — shouting, and singing, and glad 
pealing of bells, as around a victorious king. 
We saw also the flickering glare of the torches 
with which they welcomed her, reddening the sky 
above. 

We knew well it was the Maid making her 
joyous entry. They welcomed her with rapture, 
“ as if God Himself had descended among them,” 
men, women, and children, thronging and 
pressing around her to touch her clothes or the 
trappings of her white horse. 

She led the multitude at once straight to the 
cathedral to give thanks to God, and then went 
with her own two young brothers and the 
knights who had protected her from Vancouleurs, 
and slept in the house of Jacques Bouchier, 
treasurer of the Duke of Orleans. 

And then silence fell on the besieged city, 
a peaceful silence, as on a home to which the 
father and mother have come back. 

“ The whole people felt themselves, ” it was 
said, “ altogether heartened afresh, as if the 
siege were already raised {d^sassieg^s) by the 
Divine power that was felt to be in that simple 
maid.” 

We had none of us seen the Maid herself. 
But some of us felt as if a presence had come 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


I »8 

mto the city which made it sacred and solemn 
as a cathedral ; as if some supernatural influence 
had descended from sun or moon, or the 
heavenly places whence the seas are moved. 
And the tide had already turned. 

It was on the 30th of April, 1429, the day 
after her entry into Orleans, that we first saw 
the Maid. 

I saw her first as a messenger of peace, risk- 
ing life and insult for a work of charity. 

And from that day to this nothing could ever 
make me doubt that she was sent of God. 

It was the last day of April. 

I woke with a dim sense of being in the old 
garden of Danescombe Manor, as if the songs of 
blackbirds and thrushes were in the air, and the 
scent of spring in the thorn thicket, from the 
herb and flower borders in Cecilie’s garden. 

There was little enough to bear witness of 
spring in the wasted land around me then. Here 
and there a forlorn clipped tree, throwing out a 
little innocent touch of green amid the charred 
vineyards, or some poor green twigs budding 
with fresh leaves on a felled trunk, like infants 
clasping a dead mother. 

In our forts there was little stir. 

Let our commanders scorn and rage as they 
would, the deadly life and movement of victo- 
rious war was passing from us. 


PERCIVAUS STORY, 


109 


There was no talk any more of fresh enter 
prises, only of defence and holding our own. No 
one spoke of defeat, but the whole attitude had 
changed. The people of Orleans were right. 
The mere entry of the Maid had raised the siege, 
and thenceforth it was they who were the be- 
siegers, and we the besieged. 

Once more the Maid sent us a summons of 
surrender, or rather an entreaty to yield to her 
King, her King and ours. 

The assumption naturally made the English 
leaders, and all who disbelieved or wished to dis- 
believe in her, furious. 

The captains replied as before, with threats 
and insults. 

They would burn her, make her burn and 
perish in the flames, the death of witches and 
heretics, they said. 

They would have detained her envoys, re- 
fusing to treat with her as with an honorable 
enemy, save for Dunois’ menace to repay any 
ill-treatment of these on the English prisoners 
taken the night before. 

And they added scornfully that she was a 
low and worthless wench, and had best go back 
and herd her cows. 

She felt these insults keenly. 

She, the simple village-maiden, sheltered un- 
til a few weeks before at her father and mother’s 


no 


yOAAT THE MAID. 


fireside, beloved and honored by all the village, 
passing her time between her prayers and the 
church, or in the field, and working by her moth- 
er’tj side, shrank from rude words even more than 
a great lady. For while pure in heart as a child, 
she had lived too close to the horrors of war and 
the rough, unveiled peasant-life, not to know 
what they meant. 

Her father was a man to whom the honor of 
his child was as sacred as it could have been to 
any knightly house. 

“ Rather,” he had said when first he had 
heard of her call to go to the king, “ would he 
drown her with his own hand than let her go 
away unsheltered among the soldiers.” 

And the too-well understood words of public 
insult in face of hundreds of men who prob- 
ably believed them, stung her like a poisoned 
barb. 

But not for that would she lose one possible 
hope of reconciling and saving the foes who 
launched the insults. The attack was prepared, 
but she would not suffer it to begin before once 
more she had come in person to present the 
summons to surrender. 

And thus it was that I first saw her. She 
came forward to the most advanced post of 
Orleans, on the bridge, near enough to our fort 
of Les Tourelles, on the opposite side, for us to 




en, young- 


III 

hearts ''oi|^-j^j§|:j^pri<5o5hear tligSnsults of 
the soldiers. 

A^un^ 
er than 

I cannot sense of strength 

and majesty that surrounded her. 

In trying to recall that first vision of her, I 
find myself thinking of the armies of heaven 
that followed the King, her King,” on white 
horses, clothed with fine linen, white and clean, 
and of the “ young men” (who were angels) “ at 
the sepulchre in shining clothes.” And I ob- 
serve that others, in describing her, speak of her 
as arrayed all in white, which could not be liter- 
ally true. 

I suppose her steel armor glittered in the 
sun, and her white lily-bordered banner waved 
like a bright cloud above her, and the white 
horse she often rode made her as a bit of sun- 
shine amid the dark ranks around. But it was 
chiefly, I think, that she flashed on heart and 
conscience as something pure and heavenly, and 
through these on the sense. 

There was no suggestion of weakness or fem- 
inine appeal about her. 

The mercy in her was majestic, as the pity 
not of sympathetic weakness, but of succoring 
power. 

She rode her charger with the quiet ease and 


II2 


JOAN THE MAID. 


power those noble, sympathetic creatures recog”- 
nize. Joan and her horse were always of one 
mind. 

And there she sate, as near as might be to 
our forts ; and I heard her voice, deep and pen- 
etrating, but soft and feminine. 

In simple words she summoned the comman- 
der, Glasdale, to surrender, offering safety of life 
and limb if he would abandon the fort ; terms as 
from a conqueror to foes already vanquished, or 
rather as of a merciful sovereign, such as He 
from whom she believed herself sent, to rebels. 

It was no wonder that to our captains and our 
army this demand seemed the insolence of mad- 
ness. 

We were victors, habituated to victory for 
years. A few days before, sixteen hundred of 
us had put six thousand to flight. 

Our king had been accepted as his rightful 
heir by their king. 

Their dauphin we believed not so much to be 
a dispossessed sovereign as the disowned son of 
a justly dishonored mother, the wicked, adulter- 
ous, and murderous Queen Isabella. Nothing 
had happened to change the state of the war 
since our “ victory of the Herrings” but the ar- 
rival of this one peasant maid. 

Glasdale replied with scorn and insults, call- 
ing her evil names, bidding her return to her 


PERCIVALS STORY. II3 

cattle, and crying aloud that if he captuied her 
he would have her burned alive. 

She took these insults patiently, and made 
no reply but by telling us once more that “ we 
should have to go.” To Glasdale, indeed, she 
added, “Ye will go, but thou wilt not see it'' 

And so, for that time, she returned to the 
city. She left a tumult of angry and mocking 
voices among us, raging at her insolence, her low 
birth, the ignorance and folly of her demands. 

And yet, underneath all these angry words, 
something was left in the hearts and consciences of 
us all, that kept us, as if spell-bound, within our 
forts. 

Panic, I know, has seized the bravest troops 
on the battle-field, and shorn them of strength 
as Samson when Delilah cut off his locks. 

But we were behind fortifications, we were 
used to victory. But yesterday we pressed forth 
conhdently to battle, as if it were but to take 
spoils already won. 

And yet, when on the morrow morning 
Dunois and a few nobles whose ransoms had 
been worth us much, marched close under our 
forts on their way to bring back the army from 
Blois, it was enough that the Maid had come out 
with them and was between us and the city, to 
keep our commanders from making an attempt 
at injuring or capturing one of those Frenchmen 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


ii4 

as they rode haughtily, close under our guns. 
Having thus guarded the exit ol the Bastard of 
Orleans and his little company by her mere pres- 
ence, she returned to the city. 

And there the people thronged around the 
house she sojourned in, so as well-nigh to break 
the strong oaken doors. 

She came forth, we were told, and rode 
through the streets, and there the crowds were 
so great she could scarcely pass on. “ The peo- 
ple could not feast their eyes enough on the 
sight of her.” Her gentle speech, her masterly 
management of her horse, her maidenly yet mili- 
tary carriage, delighted them. And she in sim- 
ple words kept repeating, with the joyous ring of 
faith in her voice, 

“ My King has sent me to succor the good 
town of Ol leans.” 

She led them to the churches to give thanks 
— to the Church which from childhood had been 
the natural home of her heart and steps, — from 
the childhood she had scarcely left behind. 

But still her purpose of reconciliation and 
mercy towards the foes of France, who were yet 
children of Christendom, was uppermost in her 
heart. 

Once more that Sunday afternoon she went 
to the Croix Morin, near the city on the oppo- 
site side from the fort of Les Tourelles, and near 


PEJ^CIVAVS STORY. 


II5 

enough once more for her womanly voice to be 
heard, and for her to hear the insults sure to be 
showered on her in reply, and entreated the Eng. 
lish captains to listen and surrender, and return 
to England. 

There was still hope in her attitude and in 
the appeal of her tones. 

We were all Christians. Might we not all 
yet, ere it was too late, turn from the malicious 
accuser who hates us all to the merciful King 
w'ho loves us all, and join in a great work and 
warfare such as the Church has never yet seen ? 

But the old insults and defiances were, natu- 
rally enough, hurled against her again. 

Scarcely deigning to address her, the Bastard 
of Granville cried to the soldiers with her, from 
our battlements, 

“Would you have us, then, surrender to a 
woman?” 

And amid another storm of railing mockery, 
she turned mournfully back to the city. 

The gates were closed behind, her, and from 
within came solemnly on our ears the vesper-bells 
of the cathedral and the many churches, where 
she loved best to be. 

It was May-day and Sunday, and I remem- 
ber thinking how the bells were sounding from 
the little chapel in the hollow by the river across 
the valley of Danescombe, to the thorn-thickets 


yOJJV THE MAID. 


1 16 

on the green slopes, where the white blossoms 
of the May were perhaps falling around Cecilie 
or Elaine, and breathing around them sweet airs 
of spring. Or perhaps, having more need of 
prayer and the shelter of sacred places since the 
brothers were away, they and old Margery had 
gone away to the village church, and were silent- 
ly praying before the altar there. 

Praying for us, that God would preserve our 
lives and give England victory and all the world 
peace. 

Were Joan and the good sisters at home then 
praying against each other ? 

And was our Lord listening to one set of 
prayers and deaf to the other ? 

Or was he listening to all, and answering all 
in a way none of us expected or understood ? 

The great Father, with his children hating 
and misunderstanding each other, and He loving 
all! 

The pitying Saviour, lifted up on the cross 
for us all, and drawing us all by ten thousand 
intertangled ways to Him 1 

Solemnly from the beleaguered city that Sun- 
day night, that May-day, boomed the deep tones 
of the church bells across the blackened and 
wasted land, from which breathed no sweet per- 
fumes of spring, over which hovered no pleasant 
sounds of songs and twitterings of birds. The 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


117 


bells of prayer echoed back from the hostile walls 
of our forts. 

Below, between the intervals of the bells, was 
the sound of the river sweeping over its sand- 
banks and around its islands, or dashing against 
the walls and forts which resisted its course. 

And from time to time the challenges of the 
sentinels on the city walls and from our forts 
rang sharp through the quiet. 

There seemed to me a dispirited listlessness 
among our hosts. The rage of angry defiance 
was over, and on Sunday evening the thoughts 
of the homes we had left, and the homes we had 
ruined, would steal over us. 

As we walked round the ramparts, Owen and 
I, we came on Peter the Wright leaning against 
a parapet. He did not see us, and went on mut- 
tering to himself, 

“‘What doest thou here?’ saith the Lord 
God; ‘what doest thou here?’ Lord, I know 
not. How can I tell? I came for the young 
men. I am not as the wind that moves, but as 
a drop of the helpless waves, the people who are 
moved whither the rulers will. The Maid is a 
good maid, I know, and if thou hast sent her, 
forgive us for fighting against her. For what 
can I do ? Thou knowest I had rather be mak- 
ing benches beside my good wife and the sweet 
child Elaine. But the young men, my masters, 


Il8 THE MAID. 

are here. But if, indeed, the Maid is as an 
angel of thine, and yet we are, nevertheless, not 
to do her bidding and go home, but to stay here 
and die, let us die into something better, and 
not worse ; let us do good, and not harm to thy 
Kingdom by dying! For since I have seen this 
peasant maid pleading for peace from thee, I be- 
gin to hope thy Kingdom may yet come.” 

Owen was very angry. 

“ It is as bad as a traitorous mine under our 
feet, an old grumbler like that,” he said. 

But I would not let him assail Peter, and we 
passed on without his heeding us. 

That night I had a strange dream. 

I saw the Maid in white raiment and shining 
armor, the moonlight shimmering on it, with a 
face that kept changing, yet was the same 
through all its changes, tender and pale as our 
mother’s, beautiful and majestic as her Italian 
picture of the Mother of God, young and radi- 
ant and childlike as Cecilie’s, and yet with a 
pain and pity underneath such as that on the 
brow of Elaine ; her white banner in her hand — no 
weapon. But wherever its silvery light fell, bul- 
warks and forts melted like ice beneath it, and 
armies faded away like ghosts at dawn. And all 
our English host seemed turned into one long 
funeral procession. 

And there was wailing and gnashing of teeth 


PERCIVArS STORY. 


II9 

in our ranks, and among the foe Te Deums, and 
the Veni Creator, and Church canticles, and 
solemn pealing of trumpets, and joyous clangor 
of bells, though only in faint echoes, borne 
through the silent land of dreams. 

Until, all at once, the white vision seemed to 
rise higher, from an earthly height to a throne 
in the clouds, and the glorious warrior-maiden 
and her banner were mysteriously blended and 
lost in the vision of One as in our mother’s cruci- 
fix, with arms outstretched to bless the world. 

And from the bowed Head seemed to come 
not so much words, as a mighty attractive breath 
of invitation. 

And the retreating funeral procession of the 
mourners and the- dead turned towards Him, 
and the victorious hosts fell down before Him, 
and there were reconciling tears, and embraces, 
and confessions, before the cross. 

And then, once again, the cross itself changed 
into the likeness of a crowned king, encircled by 
1 glorious multitude of heavenly beings, reach- 
ing from heaven down to earth and blending 
with dear, homely, and familiar faces, including 
not only Elaine and Cecilie, but Peter, and 
Margery, and the little frightened child we 
found at the well in the burnt village; but all in 
one army, in one triumphal procession, moving 
onward and upward to some great conquest, 


120 


y^OAN THE MAID. 


perhaps of the Holy Sepulchre, perhaps of some 
lost sacred things nearer home. What, I never 
knew, because the silence of the dream was 
broken by the sound of a clarion. 

And when I woke, the last notes of the re- 
veille were echoing across the river and the 
desolated plain. 


CHAPTER yil. 
percival's story. * 


T he next day the wonderful week (it was 
but one week) which lost us Orleans and 
France began. 

That Monday was a day of pause and of leis- 
ure, a holiday leisure in the city, as of a family 
joined after separation ; among us, leisure dis- 
pirited and dumb, like that of a ship becalmed 
at sea. 

The gates of Orleans were thrown open, as if 
the siege were already raised, and the Maid rode 
forth on her white horse surrounded by an eager 
crowd of citizens, armed and unarmed, feeling 
themselves secured, it seemed, by her mere pres- 
ence, like children around a mother. They fol- 
lowed her through the fields by the river, under 
our forts, and all round the city, observing us 
fearlessly, as if we had been spell-bound inside 
our walls; which, indeed, it seemed as if we 
were. 

For no shot from culverin, no dart slung from 
an arbalest, no arrow from an English bow was 
launched from our bulwarks. 

6 


122 


yOA.V THE MAID. 


It seemed as if the whole of the English force 
crouched, powerless though observant, like some 
cowed beast, under the spell they say there is in 
human eyes. 

Angry and mocking, but immovable and 
grimly silent, our troops watched from earth- 
work, and bastille, and parapet the grave yet 
eager troop on their long procession round the 
city. 

In looking back, our inaction on that Mon-' 
day is more marvellous to me than even what 
followed. 

We were waiting reinforcements, it is true ; 
but so was Orleans. Except the two hundred who 
entered the city on Friday night with the Maid, 
many of whom had left again with Dunois on 
Sunday, no fresh troops were in the city. 

Our habit of victory had not been broken. 

Our commanders. Lord Talbot, the Earl of 
Salisbury, and the Earl of Suffolk, were brave 
and skilled as any we had ever known. 

The Maid captured, or struck down by the 
unerring aim of our English bowmen, all was as 
before ; we were on our unchecked path to the 
Conquest of all France for England and our 
king. 

And yet that day not a bow was drawn, not 
a hand was lifted ; scarcely was a voice raised in 
insult against her. 


PERCIVAL'S STORY 


123 


Quietly and fearlessly as she and the crowd 
had left the city they re-entered, the gates were 
closed, and the vesper bells from all the church- 
es told us how the multitude were gathered in 
the dim aisles at prayer around the Maid. 

The next day, Tuesday, was again a day of 
absolute repose. 

The city remained that day shut up in itself. 
It was the Festival of the Holy Cross, the Fete 
of the Cathedral, and all the bells pealed and 
clashed, and the streets were joyous, we knew, 
with processions. 

The city was still besieged, no succor had 
come; but the Maid had come! 

God, they felt, had sent the help. He was 
among them. There was no need for haste, no 
need to undervalue the powers banded against 
them. Certainly, the English were strong, brave, 
victorious, and well fortified. But there was no 
need to measure the forces, when on one side 
are right and God. 

“ It is like a miracle, that we are kept here 
doing nothing,” I said to Owen and Peter. 

And Owen said, chafing fiercely, 

“ If it is a miracle; it is a miracle of black 
magic. And such wicked spells must sooner or 
later be broken. But I see no miracle. The 
French have taken a little courage at last, and 
see how few we are. And we (ire few, and our 


124 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


commanders know it. No miracle if they wait 
for Sir John Fastolfe and his men. 

But Peter said, 

“ It is the miracle of miracles, I think, to 
make men see things as they are. And if the 
Maid has done this, she has done wonders in- 
deed. To open men’s eyes to see the fountains 
in the wilderness, is as divine a work as to smite 
the fountains from the rock. To see things as 
they are is the gift of seers ; to make other men 
see them as they are is the work of prophets.” 

Before that evening closed reinforcements 
had come to Orleans from Gien, Chateau-R^y- 
nard, and Montargis, Montargis which had re- 
sisted our assault two years before. 

And once more a tumult of welcome echoed 
to us from within the city. 

But to us, what did this mean, but that not 
only Orleans, but all the cities of France felt 
themselves dhassi^ges ? that the land was once 
more theirs, not ours ? that they were free to go 
and send hither and thither, while we were but 
a little band of aliens in a foreign land? 

Yet, still, the army which had first accom- 
panied the Maid up the wrong side of the Loire, 
and, in consequence of disobeying her lead, had 
been compelled to return to Blois, and cross by 
the bridge there, had not returned. 

The Bastard of Orleans had gone to lead it 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


12 ^ 

back, but as yet there were no signs of its reap- 
pearance. 

It was reported that the Maid was detested 
by the selfish, indolent courtiers who led the 
Dauphin, and that the favorite La Tr^mouille 
and all who had been ruling the Dauphin by 
what was meanest in him, were intriguing 
against the peasant-girl, and putting all possible 
delays and hindrances in her way. 

If the French rejected Jeanne, surely it would 
be a sign that the Almighty abandoned France, 
and our conquest might yet be, whether for 
scourge or restoration, the will of God. 

Up to that Tuesday night this hope still re- 
mained. 

But on Wednesday that hope passed away. 

Tidings came at last that Dunois and the 
little army, though reduced already by the in- 
trigues of the courtiers to half its numbers, was 
on its way, by the route Jeanne had ordered on 
Friday before, through the Beauce, on the 
right side of the Loire, under our forts. 

When she heard of their approach, the Maid 
came forth from the gates of Orleans, followed 
by La Hire and many others, and rode a league 
along the river to meet them. 

Strange as it was, it was the simple fact that 
this peasant girl, only a few months since spin- 
ning by her mother’s hearth at Domremy, went 


126 


yOAN THE MAID. 


forth to guard the army of succor past our forts. 
And she did it. 

Our commanders suffered her to go forth 
with her little company, unchallenged, under our 
battlements, with her white standard in her 
hand. 

And a short time afterwards she returned 
with the whole army, close beneath our forts, 
not so much in a military march as in a religious 
procession. The Maid, with her lily banner, the 
banner of the Crucifix, and the priests in their 
white vestments, chanting the “ Veni Creator/’ 
and other church canticles. 

That day it was said there was an innocent 
exultation, like that of a happy child, about the 
Maid. 

We were expecting Sir John Fastolfe with 
reinforcements. She playfully threatened Dunois 
that if he suffered them to arrive without letting 
her know he should lose his head. 

Nevertheless, with a petty feeling of jealousy 
of seeming to let her rule, the French captains 
began the attack on our bastile of St Loup, 
without telling the Maid. 

Our three hundred men, though surprised 
without their captain, held the post gallantly. 
It commanded the road to Burgundy and the 
passage of the Loire, and was strongly fortified. 

The Frenchmen were beaten back, many of 


rEICCIVArS STORY, 


127 


them fell, and their wounded were being borne 
back to Orleans, when suddenly the Maid ap- 
peared riding swiftly. 

She stopped as she met her wounded country- 
men. 

“ Never could she see the blood of a French- 
man shed," she said, “ without her hair standing 
up on her head." 

She had been resting, unarmed, on her bed, 
when “ her heavenly counsel," she said, “ told 
her to go against the English." 

As she rose, the cry sounded through the 
streets that the French were being beaten back. 

Indignant, she sent for her horse, was armed 
by the lady of the house and her daughter, 
mounted, had her standard handed to her 
through the window, galloped through the 
streets, so that “ her horse’s hoofs struck fire on 
the stones," and in a few minutes was on the 
edge of the fosse of our bastion. 

Dunois and others followed her to sustain 
the attack. But she desired them rather to keep 
back and watch, lest the English should send 
succor from the other forts. 

And so by her presence and their absence she 
gained the day. 

For twice Lord Talbot sent reinforcements 
from the neighboring forts. 

And twice the besieged saw it from the great 


128 


;/OAN THE MAID. 


belfry, and gave warning in time to repulse the 
English succors by a sortie. 

And so at last our gallant three hundred 
were dislodged, and killed or captured. 

Among them were some Churchmen, who 
pleaded to be spared. 

The Maid would not have any of the prison 
ers harmed. 

“ Enough blood had been shed,’' she said 
“ that day.” 

“ She wept over the slain,” her chaplain said, 
“ thinking they had died without confession.” 

With her own people she felt the bond of 
flesh and blood, -and her flesh quivered in sym- 
pathy. But with all men she felt the imperish- 
able bond of soul and faith, of the Redeeming 
Blood shed for all. 

She trembled to see the blood of a French- 
man. 

She wept over the unshriven souls of all. 

And so once more the gates of Orleans shut 
in the Maid. 

And from within, from every church tower, 
fell for the first time on our ears the triumphant 
peals of a French victory. 

Te Deums were being sung there by rescued 
multitudes, kneeling with the Maid, theii 
df^liverer, before the altars. 

And we were defeated outside, with out 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


129 


brave three hundred dead and gone, and the 
fort so carefully raised throwing the glare of its 
burning ruins on the river it had guarded. 

The next day, Thursday, the Festival of the 
Ascension dawned sadly enough for us. 

In the city, still supposed to be besieged, the 
bells of all the churches called to mass, to joy- 
ous processions, to thanksgiving, and prayer. 

And yet, as we learned afterwards, that day 
was dedicated, by the Maid’s entreaties, not only 
to thanksgiving and adoration, but to penitence 
and confession and amendment of life. 

Their own vices, she said, and their own dis- 
orders, were their worst enemies, not the Eng- 
lish. 

She commanded that not a soldier should be 
suffered to fight on the morrow who had not 
confessed. 

She insisted that no dissolute women should 
be tolerated among them, or God would suffer 
them to be defeated. 

They were sad enough at all times, to me, in 
that war, the festivals of our religion ; that com- 
mon religion, which, nevertheless, did not keep 
us from burning each other’s churches, and wast- 
ing and ruining life and more than life. 

But that Ascension Day was a solemnity 
never to be forgotten. 

*‘What does it all mean.^” I remember say 
6 * 


130 


JO A AT THE MAID. 


ing to Peter, as we came from mass at an altar 
raised in the fields. “ Is He ascended out of 
sight, out of hearing, whither we cannot come?” 

“ So I had thought,” replied Peter, “ too 
long, too long! But I begin to think once more, 
it is only our eyes that are holden and our ears 
that are dull of hearing, and that He is indeed, 
still truly Messire and King.” 

“ Messire and King of whom?” I said. “To 
the Maid and the French, King of loyal sub- 
jects ? to us King of doomed rebels ? Nay, that 
cannot be 1 What are Charles and Isabella and 
their sinful court that the King of Heaven 
should fight for them and against us?” 

“I know not. Master Percival, that He is 
fighting against us,” said Peter with a strange 
gentleness. “ His rod as well as His staff may 
be for us. My eyes are very dazed still, but 
I think I begin to see men as trees walking.” 

And Peter relapsed into his habitual silence, 
and would say no more. 

But to me that night of Ascension Day was 
a night of agony. 

And once more before nightfall I saw the 
Maid as an angel of reconciliation and mercy. 

This time she bound her summ.ons to sur- 
render round an arrow, and launched it among 
us, saying only — 

“ Read ! These are tidings to you, men of 


PEJ^CIVAVS STORY. 


I3I 

England, who have no right in this kingdom of 
France. The King of Heaven orders by me 
that ye abandon your forts and go home to 
your own country. Otherwise I will cause you 
such a crash of ruin as shall be held in perpetual 
remembrance. This I write to you for the third 
and last time, and I will never write to you 
again. 

“Jesus Maria, Jeanne La Pucelle. 

“ I would have sent you my letters more 
honorably, but you retain my heralds. You de- 
tain my herald Guyenne. Send him back to me, 
and I will send back to you some of your people 
taken in St. Loup, for they are not all dead.” 

The words were more peremptory than before, 
with less of hope in them. But still she meant 
them as a royal and Divine offering of mercy. 

To our troops, however, they naturally seem- 
ed insolent beyond endurance, and they cried as 
they took up their arms, 

“ Here are news from the harlot of the Ar- 
magnacs.” 

She heard the dreadful word, her head droop- 
ed, and she wept bitterly, appealing for succor 
to the King of Heaven. 

And that was the last we heard of peace from 
the Maid. 

After that, we were ordered, Owen and I 
and Peter, into the Fort of Les Tourelles, on the 


132 


THE MAID. 


opposite side of the river, where it was believed 
the brunt of to-morrow’s battle would be. 

It was sure to be the last night on earth for 
many in our ranks and theirs. 

But that must be in all battles, and hope is 
mostly stronger than fear ; and hitherto our 
cause, to me, had seemed, if not the noblest one 
could fight for, still with so much right on our 
side, and so much wrong on the other, that I 
had trusted that the Almighty, who had willed 
we should be born English, would be content 
with our fighting as Englishmen. 

Now, however, if in truth this peasant girl, 
whom good women reverenced, whom captains 
and armies had to obey, whose presence was a 
wall of fire to those she came to succor and as a 
cloud of darkness to us ; who fought against pro- 
fanity and sin with Divine severity, and wept 
over suffering with Divine pity ; if she was in- 
deed inspired and sent of God, not only must 
our armies be defeated, but every blow we struck 
was against good and for evil, and each depart- 
ing soul must enter as a rebel into the presence 
of the King. 

So killing, and so dying, we might be exiled 
not only from England, but from heaven, from 
God, and all good souls here or departed, foi 
ever. 

Yet, what escape was there for any of us ? 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


133 


The simple peasant wit of Peter helped him. 

“ What it is right to do to-morrow, Master 
Percival ?” in answer to me, he said. “To do 
what I have been doing ever since I came to this 
poor wasted, foolish country; to save as many 
lives of our own people as we can, and trust the 
Lord will forgive me if I have stumbled on the , 
wrong side. To-morrow’s work is clearer to me 
than most. For it will be a tug for life and 
death, and what I can do to take you and Mas- 
ter Owen and myself back safe to the old home, 
to Mistress Elaine, and Cecilie, and my Margery, 

I will.” 

The attack did not begin that Friday until 
the morning was already advanced. 

It was directed against Les Tourelles and 
the two other forts which commanded the 
bridge. 

We knew afterwards that there had been hes- 
itation in the enemy’s councils, and attempts 
to deceive the Maid. 

She crossed by the Isle St. Aignan, and the 
two boats moored together which joined it to 
the left shore. 

The first attack on the Bastille des Augus- 
tins, which was farther from the river than Les 
Tourelles, was repulsed. 

Once more, for the last time, we saw the 
familiar sight of a flying foe. 


134 


yOAAT THE MAID. 


But our pursuit was checked by the Maid 
herself, who rallied the fugitives, and drove our 
people back. 

That evening the Augustins was captured, 
and all of the little garrison who could not reach 
our fort of Les Tourelles were slain. 

The Maid returned to pass the night in the 
city, not so much for shelter for herself, as we 
learned afterwards, as to defend Orleans against 
the half-hearted cowards who were for ever 
undermining her plans. 

The next morning, early at dawn, she was at 
the gates, having heard mass, and ready for 
the combat. The governor of the city, by the 
orders of the captains, endeavored to prevent 
her leaving. 

“You are a wicked man,” she said; “and 
whether it please you or not, the men-at-arms 
will pass, and win as they won yesterday.” 

The people and the soldiers stood by her, 
and she forced her way through the gates. 

Yet all the time she knew, for she had pre- 
dicted it to many who afterwards remembered, 
that she herself would be wounded severely in 
that day’s battle. 

All day, from six o’clock in the morning, the 
terrible assault went on, the French swarming 
up the walls and ladders, and our Englishmen 
defending with cannon and arrows, or beating 


PERCIVAVS STCRY. 


135 


them back one by one as they scaled the para- 
pets, with axes and lances and leaden mallets. 

The slaughter was great. 

The Maid was in the thick of the danger 
with her banner. 

In battle she always bore her banner, not 
her sword, for she never herself shed blood. 

“Fear not,” she kept saying, “ the place is 
yours.” 

Still we held our own, when, at midday, the 
Maid herself descended into the fosse, and 
planted a ladder against the parapet. 

Then she was struck by a dart from an 
arbalest. 

It pierced through her neck and came out on 
the other side. 

We saw her wounded, we heard her cry out 
with fear and pain, and burst into tears. 

She minded the pain as Cecilie might or 
Elaine, and she wept, not so much like a wo- 
man, as like a hurt child unused to pain, or to 
concealment of what she felt. 

So it seemed to me; and it touched me to 
the heart. 

But at once, with her own hands, she drew 
out the dart. 

There was a moment of hope and triumph 
on our side, and of discouragement among the 
enemy. 


136 


•JfOAAT THE MAID. 


They crowded around her. Some of the 
soldiers I had heard counselling her to have the 
wound charmed. 

But she refused, saying — 

I would rather die than do anything I kneiv 
to be sin^ and contrary to the will of God I' 

Then they bound up the wound with a com- 
press of olive oil. 

Afterwards I heard how she made one of her 
frequent shrifts (brief, and like a good child’s, for 
the most part, I trow), and wept, and w’as com- 
forted. 

But we, seeing her go aside, and the chiefs 
crowding around her, and the pause and dis- 
couragement, began to take hope. 

We breathed once more, for we thought the 
Maid was killed. 

In truth, the day was all but lost for the 
French, and would have been lost from that mo- 
ment, but for the heroism and faith of the sim- 
ple weeping peasant girl, the peasant girl, whose 
child-like hand touched the hand of God. 

The chiefs insisted on abandoning the assault 
for the day, and retreating to the city. 

But she went apart into a neighboring vine- 
yard to pray, and in a few minutes she reappear- 
ed on horseback, wounded as she was, with her 
banner in her hand, and said to a gentleman 
near her— 


PERCIVALS STORY, 


137 


“ Take heed when my banner touches the 
bulwark.” 

‘‘Jeanne,” he said in a few moments, “the 
end touches.” 

Then she exclaimed, “ Enter! all is yours.” 

And at once followed the rush and deadly 
confusion of the last assault, blood and fire and 
vapor of smoke, desperate grappling hand to 
hand, oaths and cries and curses and prayers. 

The very sight of the Maid we had thought 
wounded to death, with her white banner, and 
the sound of her quiet, assured voice, struck a 
panic into our bravest. 

Surely either heaven or hell was fighting visi- 
bly for France. 

And against either what availed human 
force ? 

Still we held our own ; there was no thought 
of surrender. 

The last incident of the battle I remember 
was the death of our commander Glasdale. 

He, with a number of English driven from 
the outlying bulwark, was crossing the end of 
the bridge to reach the Fort of Les Tourelles, 
when a boat full of combustibles dashed against 
the bridge and set it on fire, so that all our 
countrymen were plunged into the river. 

The horror of the sudden catastrophe made, 
a minute of silence. 


138 


yOAN THE MAIL 


And through the silence I heard once more 
the voice of the Maid, broken by tears, calling 
or: all to save the drowning men. 

“ Glasdale, Glasdale, ” she said, “yield thee, 
yield thee to the King of Heaven. You called 
me harlot. I have great pity for your souls.” 

But there was no salvation out of that fire 
and blood. 

And that night, of all the gallant company 
who fought through those two days of death, 
not one Englishman remained on the left bank 
of the river who was not killed or captured. 

That Saturday night, for the agony of inward 
conflict of the previous night I had the anguish 
of wounds and thirst, of doubt as to my brother’s 
fate, and of hearing in my few snatches of fever- 
ish sleep, as it were, my mother’s voice and Ce- 
cilie’s murmuring, “ Take care of Owenf and 
“ Why did you let him be wounded? ” 

At last the darkness passed, and the dread- 
ful dawn arose over the scene of ruin and 
slaughter. 

Straining to listen if I could distinguish any 
familiar sound among the moans around I 
caught at last a faint murmur of my own name. 

It was the voice of my brother, and I 
thanked God. 

Then I contrived to drag myself, before our 
captors were awake, to the place where Owen lay. 


PERCIVAUS STORY. 


13. 

And so it came about that we had the mercy 
of being thrown into one prison, when, on the 
next day, we were driven across the roughly re 
paired bridge into Orleans. 

But that Sunday evening before we left the 
ruined fort, the fate of the city was finally de- 
cided, and the siege was raised. 

Across the river, through one of the many 
breaches in the walls, we saw the whole English 
army ranged before the city, as if for an assault. 

And between them and the gates came forth 
the garrison. 

For a whole hour the French and English 
hosts faced each other. 

The Maid was there. 

An altar was raised, and two masses were 
celebrated before the troops. 

The enemy, flushed with yesterday’s success, 
were eager to attack. 

Talbot and our countrymen stood ready for 
the fight. 

But when the mass was finished, the Maid 
asked which way the English were facing. 

It was replied, “ Away from the city towards 
Meun.” 

“Then, in God’s name,” she said, “let them 
0-0. My King wills not that we fight them to- 
day.” 

And so, slowly and in perfect order, our lit- 


140 ^OAJV THE MAID. 

tie army went its way. We were but few, after 
all, and the first wonder was not that we had 
to raise the siege, but that we had ever main- 
tained it. 

Owen’s wounds were more disabling than 
mine, and they let me carry him on my back 
across the broken bridge into the city. 

As we stumbled along our melancholy jour- 
ney, we saw the citizens pouring out of every 
gate, pillaging and destroying the deserted forts 
and bulwarks which had cost us so many weary 
nights and days to build. 

And from the dark cell where they had the 
mercy to leave me and Owen together alone, we 
heard the pealing of the bells and the feet of the 
crowds in the street overhead, as they went from 
church to church in solemn procession. 

It was a strange time that May Sunday in 
the dark at Orleans, our first day of captivity. 

It was like being in a tomb, buried, yet liv- 
ing ; “ free among the dead, as those that are 
wounded and lie in the grave.” 

Yet there was a strange sense of rest and 
calm. 

The conflict of duties was over, and I was 
left once more to the simple, unperplexed 
charge which was so natural to me, the care of 
Owen, and that in its simplest form. 

His chief wound was from a ball which had 


PERCIVALS STORY. 


141 


torn his right foot. There was nothing to be 
done but to bathe and cleanse the wound from 
splinters, and to leave it to heal itself with rest 
and time. 

The danger was fever, aggravated by the bit- 
ter chafing of his spirit against what seemed to 
him the diabolical wrong of the English defeat. 

At first he was very desponding, and sure he 
should never see England again, and gave me 
many pathetic messages. 

But when the last bells had ceased to sound, 
and the noises died away in the streets above 
our cell, he said half casually — 

“ Have you given up saying the evening 
prayers our mother used to say with us? I re- 
fused to say them with you once at the old 
home.” 

I knelt beside him, and he followed me like 
a penitent child in the familiar sacred words. 

“ I hope God will forgive me,” he said at the 
end. “ I cannot think of any trespasses against 
me to forgive. People have been very good to 
me. And, above all, thou, old man !” he added. 

This was new from Owen, and made me feel 
some fear for his life. His own innocence in 
any contention was usually so clear to him. 

And then, as I lay down beside him, this 
strange sense of rest and even of freedom came 
over me. 


142 


^OAN- THE MAID. 


“ Free among the dead.” 

It seemed as if I were not so much in the 
grave as in purgatory. Life all behind me, irre- 
vocable, with its opportunities lost or used, and 
I, in the hand of God, in the fires of God, which 
are many, to be corrected and tried as He 
willed. 

In this world no hope any more ; ambition, 
love, all for ever behind me. 

Yet nothing lost. The love denied, the love 
given, and, above all, the love loved, all working 
and burning on for ever ; nothing to hope or 
fear for myself, yet thence deriving not despair, 
but an unspeakable solemn joy of liberty, as a 
creature that has suddenly found wings and can 
soar into an infinite world. 

The wings were only feeble beginnings as 
yet, and I certainly could not soar; but they 
were there, and the great world of God was 
there. He Himself was there, and the freedom 
and the wings, and all, were simply this new joy 
of helpless and entire abandonment to His will, 
as when after a conflict with breakers a boat is 
all at once launched with a steady wind on a 
calm and open sea. 

Every person I had loved seemed nearer and 
dearer to me than ever, Elaine, Cecilie, England. 
All restless desire to change and remould had 
gone. I was in the current of the will that was 


FERCIVAVS STORY. 


143 


swaying all ; in the fire of the will that was try- 
ing and fusing and purifying all. 

And through all shone that vision of the like- 
ness of the Master in that peasant maid — like a 
strong angel of mercy, entreating us to be recon- 
ciled ; like a merciful angel of judgment with a 
flaming sword, smiting us back into the true 
path ; like a trustful child bemoaning her wound 
to a father ; like a virgin martyr, refusing all re- 
lief at cost of right; “ I had rather die than do 
anything I knew to be sin, or contrary to the will 
of God like a tender mother weeping over 
wounded Frenchmen and dead Englishmen, try- 
ing to save from death the foe whose insults had 
so smitten her. 

I thanked God for the sight of her face and 
the sound of her voice. It made me able to lie 
still under His hand and' in His fires. For in 
her I had seen a little nearer the likeness of the 
eternal Son. 

For what she felt for France He felt for the 
world. 

It was a rest to be there, though as in a sep- 
ulchre, and feel with the whole city, under the 
wings of a mother-bird, or borne on the mighty 
wings of a strong angel ; though to us the pas- 
sage to mercy lay through the flames. 

It was but for a night. 

Triumph was nothing to the Maid, save as a 


144 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


sign of victory of the cause she served ; victory 
was little, save as a step to conquering the 
whole field, and saving the whole lost country. 

And so, after her work of deliverance, which 
made hei for ever the Maid of Orleans, she left 
the grateful crowds of simple, rescued people at 
once, and went back to the intriguing court, to 
encounter the half-hearted coldness, the jealous 
opposition, the treacherous flatterers there, and 
to vanquish all for France. 

Only for that one night I lay, as it seemed, 
under the shelter of her presence, while she, 
doubtless, was sleeping the healthy peasant sleep, 
the sleep of a child whose last waking conscious- 
ness has been the Father’s smile, the sleep of a 
mother with all her brood safe under her wings. 

I also had the one of the flock given me to 
care for, close and safe beside me; and there 
was rest also in that. 

Some shepherds have nations to guard and 
feed, some have a few sheep in the wilderness, 
one we believe has all those on earth ; One, we 
know, has all the flocks in earth and heaven, 
and some have but one ewe-lamb. Yet the 
habit, and the heart of the shepherd are in their 
nneasure common to all. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


PETER THE WEIGHT’S STORY. 

T he fort of Les Tourelles lay smouldeiing 
in ashes, deserted by English and French, 
when I began to wake up from the stun of the 
fall on the edge of the fosse where I had lain in 
the death-grapple with the Orleans soldier 
whose sword I had turned from the throat of my 
young master Owen. 

All the living were gone, and I stumbled 
feebly with my benumbed limbs among the 
dead. 

The first sound that roused me to the sense 
that I was still in the land of the living were the 
church bells from Orleans, all together, or at 
intervals, for vespers. 

I knelt down and crossed myself, and said 
the Lord’s Prayer, and thought of Margery and 
the little lady Elaine. 

And next I thought of my young masters,, 
and made up my mind that I must find them, 
slain or spared. 

To this end I turned up one and another of 
the white drawn faces, but no familiar face was 
7 


146 


yOAiV THE MAID. 


among them, and the conviction grew on me 
that Sir Percival and Sir Owen were alive. 

I crept slowly to the river, bathed the dread- 
ful stains from hands and face, took some bread 
from my wallet, and sate down a minute to 
think. 

It was so unusual to have no one but my 
self to serve. 

The church bells still rang at intervals across 
the river. 

How hateful those bells, and all the signs of 
what so many of us had felt that false and dese- 
crated worship had been to me ! 

All we are meant to hate, pride and covet- 
ousness cind*lust and injustice and wrong, asso- 
ciated through the wicked lives of priest and 
friar with all we are meant to adore and love ! 

Lie and truth inextricably intertwined, and 
God far off on a judgment seat in heaven, seem- 
ing to care for none of those things! 

For it was not to have a mere pardon as a 
pass into some unknown country where things 
might be better which we peasants wanted, it 
was to have this world better, to have justice for 
wife and child, to have a kingdom of God here 
and now. 

And . now through a peasant girl it seemed 
the King had once more appeared to set the 
world right. 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY, 1 4 / 

The Book, the glorious Book of the good 
tidings was no more for me a dead record of 
things done in the beginning, but a living reve* 
lation of what is now and ever shall be ; and this 
had come to me through a peasant maid. 

Kings and armies had to obey her. They 
could not protect her. She protected them. 

They tried to deceive her, and were them- 
selves deceived. 

She cared for no honor from men. They 
had none to give her of the kind she prized. 

She cared no more for glory or splendor than 
a child or an angel. 

She cared only to succor and to save. 

And this she wanted to do, and* she would 
do, if men would let her, for England as well as 
France. 

And this Maid, this messenger of God, they 
said, loved the sound of church bells, and de- 
lighted in prayer, and in the blessed sacraments. 

She saw everywhere, not the soiled human 
hands, but the gifts they brought from God. 

She sought Him, and she found Him. 

From the cathedral, as I sate and listened, 
came the repeated strokes of the bell which told 
of the raising of the Host. 

The Maid was there, in the city she had 
saved, among the soldiers she had taught to re- 
pent, joyfully adoring in the presence of God, 


148 


yOAN THE MAID, 


Weeping and wounded but yesterday, I had 
heard her say, refusing to have her wound re- 
lieved by a mere charm — 

‘‘ 1 Jiad rather die than sin.'^ 

Dreading sin more than death, this pure and 
strong child of God found a way to Him where 
I had seen only stumbling-blocks. 

I knelt once more, and confessed my pride 
beside the humble gladness of this blessed one. 

Then I rose and went to look for a little 
spring I knew in a vineyard near at hand. It 
was the vineyard, I believe, where the Maid had 
gone apart during the fight to pray, and whence 
she returned like an angel of victory. 

When I reached the little arched well in the 
vineyard wall, and had stooped to drink, a faint 
moan came to me from the other side of the 
wall. 

Rising and looking over, I saw a crouching 
human figure, or rather a heap of rags against 
the opposite bank, half covered by a stream of 
hair, tangled and dishevelled, but fair as the 
lady Cecilie’s, or as Margery’s last babe who 
died when Master Percival was born. 

The attitude was not so much of sufiering as 
of forlorn despair. 

On the arms, in which the face was hidden, 
were jewelled bracelets, and the soiled head- 
dress was of silk. 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY, 1 49 


It was too plain what she was. 

“Are you English, poor child?” I said. 

There was no answer, and I repeated the 
question in such poor French as I had learned 
ill the war. 

“ If you are French don’t fear an old man.” 

“ I am neither English nor French,” was the 
moaning reply. “ I am dust, to be trampled 
under foot. Let me be trampled into my dust. 
Let me die.” 

I had never many words when I most 
wanted them ; but the girl’s fair hair made me 
think of our lost babe, for whose death I had 
scarce yet been able to forgive God. 

It flashed on me, some mother’s babes do 
more than die, they live to become such as 
this. 

I could not leave her to perish. 

I moved one hand gently from her face, and 
broke into it some of the crust of bread. 

She looked up half bewildered, not meeting 
my eyes ; but something of command in my 
voice seemed to subdue her, and she ate a few' 
bits, but with no human recognition, no pleased 
response, even such as a dog’s, rather as w'ater 
might swallow or fire burn what you laid on it. 

Then she let her hand fall listlessly, and the 
rest of the bread drop from it crumbling. 

I picked it up. 


150 


JOAN THE MAID. 


“Bread is precious,” I said. “We may not 
soon find another crust.” 

I thought she might understand by the 
** we ” she had a friend. 

But she merely knelt down quite submis- 
sively, and gently gathered up all the crumbs 
and laid them in my hand. 

The hands were capable brown peasant hands 
used to work. 

Clearly she would not accept the “ we. ” 

“ You are not dust,” she said; “you are a 
human creature. You must live.” 

“ Child !” I said, “ you are a creature of God ; 
you are a French peasant girl, like Jeanne la 
Pucelle ; you must live.” 

She rose with a great cry of anguish, and 
looked me full in the face, as if to repel scorn 
with indignation. 

But I suppose the tears in my eyes touched 
her — they were stealing over my old cheeks — ■ 
and she sank down at my feet, not now with a 
dry cry of despair, but sobbing like a child. 

“Like Jeanne la Pucelle! la Pucelle! I 
played with her under the Ladies’ Tree at Dom- 
remy. I saw her last Sunday like an angel, like 
the blessed Mary, and she drove me from the 
camp, from the town, she cast me out to be 
trodden under foot and perish.” 

“ The blessed Lord would not have driven 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY. 15I 

you away,” I said. “ He loved and pitied sin- 
ful women.” 

She rose on her knees, and, with her soiled, 
tear-stained face she looked straight up in my 
eyes. 

“ He would,” she said passionately. “ He 
7vould. For she did. And she is like Him. 
Whatever I may be, I know by something in 
me, she is like Him. I will never lose that. 
Even in hell I will not cease to feel that, and be 
glad of it. She did it because she pitied ; she 
had pity on France. She would die for France. 
And therefore she casts out such as me. For I 
am not only dust, I am poison. I am the pesti- 
lence. She did right. It was love that made 
her hate mel' 

The unveiled depth of her humiliation drew 
me down underneath her, and made me, old 
man as I was, kneel down beside her and hide 
my face in my hands. 

I prayed in English in my heart, 

“ Lord Christ, thou hast no outcasts. Thou 
sufferest such to be driven away, not to be trod- 
den under foot, but to hide beside thine own 
feet, and bathe them with tears.” 

And then I rose and said in a grave quiet 
tone — 

“Thou hast to do something harder than to 
be trodden under foot and die. Thou hast to 


152 


yOAN- THE MAID. 


turn back and live, and be good. And the Lore' 
Christ and Jeanne la Pucelle will help thee.” 

Be good?” she moaned 

“ Yes,” I said. “ I will take thee back to thy 
father and mother, if they are in Barbary or in 
Germany or with the Grand Turk. And thou 
must let them chasten thee as they will.” 

“ I have no father or mother/’ she said. 
“ They died when I was a child — a good litth 
child.” 

And -with these words an accent of pity for 
herself came in place of the scorn. And she 
was beginning to weep again. 

“Thou must not weep,” I said. “ There is 
no time. I must escape and hide myself and 
thee. Rise and wash thy face in the well, and 
bind up thy hair, and throw away these silken 
rags, and we will go. Thou must help me, I 
have no child, and thou hast no father, and I 
will take thee to my old wife Margery, and thou 
wilt be good. But now thou must wash thy 
face and help me^ or they will kill me.” 

She gave one searching look in my face, then 
something like a smile, like a faint grey dawn of 
hope came into her eyes, which were blue, like 
our dead babe’s, and she went and knelt beside 
the well and drank and bathed her face and 
hands, and bound up her long fair hair in a great 
coil around her head ; and among the slain I 


PETER THE WRIGHTS STORY. 1 53 

found a dark cloak, which she threw around her 
head and shoulders, and without another word 
she followed me across the fields, crouching 
under the walls and in the trenches, so as not to 
be observed. 

That night we found an old ruined barn, 
about a league from Orleans, and in it some stray 
ears of corn. And the child made a fire on the 
ground and parched the ears of corn, and then 
she took my leathern bottle and brought water 
from a spring, and we ate and drank; and she 
made up a bed of dried straw and leaves for me. 
But I would not take it. I was used to camping 
out, and some one, I thought, should watch that 
night, and it were safest to be me. I was not yet 
sure if the despair might not come over her again 
if I let her out of sight, and she flee away to be 
trodden under foot and die. 

So I bade her lie down on the bed of dead 
leaves. 

And I knelt down to my prayers outside. 

But in the silence I heard again the sound 
of suppressed sobs 

I went to her to wrap her up, as Margery 
and I used our babes. 

“ Good night,” I said, “ the Lord Christ sent 
La Pucelle to bring thee back to Him and make 
thee good.” 

But she would not be comforted. 


iS4 


yOAN THE MAID. 


‘‘You are right/’ she murmured at last. 
“ You think me too bad to pray.” 

If I had asked her I felt sure she would have 
felt herself too bad. 

“ Cannot you pray, my poor child ? ” I said. 

“ I never prayed by myself/’ she moaned. 
“ I used to pray by my mother. And since, I 
forgot, or I didn’t dare. But I thought, perhaps, 
if you would take me I might try and come 
back. I might say the old words with you.” 

My heart came into my throat for thank- 
fulness. 

Child that she was, she had taken me into 
her father and mother’s place. She wanted to 
pray as in her childhood, in the old words, 
beside me. 

“ What were thy old words?” I said. 

“Do not all Christians say the same?” she 
said. 

And she said the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, 
and the Hail Mary. 

She said them in French, kneeling beside me. 

“ Do you understand ? ” I said. “ Forgive us 
our trespasses as we forgive.” 

“ / forgive ? What is my forgiveness 
worth ? ” she said. 

“ Much,” I said. “The world has been hard 
to you. You have much to forgive. Do you 
forgive? ” 


PETER THE WEIGH T S STORY. 


155 


“ All but one,” she said in a low voice. 

“You must forgive that one,” I said. 

No answer. 

“ Do you wish harm to that one ? ” I said. 

“ My wish could be nothing to him,’’ she 
said ; “ he has forgotten me long ago, as a boy 
forgets a bird whose nest he has robbed, or 
whose wing he has broken with a stone. Ought 
I to wish him to be happy in cruel wrong ? ” 

“ No,” I said ; “ you ought only to forgive as 
God forgives. He forgives to make us good. 
You would wish no more nests to be robbed, no 
more helpless wings broken. Then pray for 
that. That he may be forgiven and good, as 
you wish to be.” 

“ I will try,” she said. 

“ And do you know what the Creed means 
by being crucified?” I said. 

“ Of course I have seen the Crucifix,” she 
said. “ La Pucelle has it on her banner. And 
around that she only suffers the soldiers to rally 
who have confessed and cast away their sins.” 

“ It is worse than being trodden under foot,” 
I said. “ The Son of God bore that from us, 
and for us, to save us. That is what He means 
by loving, nothing short of that, by loving you 
and wanting you to be good. Do you think He 
will give it up ? ” 

“ I almost begin tc hope not,” she said. 


156 


yOAN THE MAID. 


And once more she lay down, wrapped up in 
the soldier’s cloak 

As I left the barn to keep watch outside once 
more she recalled me. 

“ I was called Claudette at home, when there 
was a home,” she said. “ Will you say, Good 
night, Claudette?” 

“ Good night, Claudette,” I said. 

And when I looked in again she was breath- 
ing with the soft even breath of a child asleep. 

And I, sitting down on a stone at the thresh- 
old, made my own prayer. 

“ Oh, Mighty and Merciful and Wise,” I 
said, “ what sin has been like mine? For I have 
been angry with Thee. I have not forgiven 
Thee, not all these years, for taking away the 
babe, and for letting the world go wrong. And 
Thou didst but take the babe to Thy heaven, 
and sufferest me to lead this lost child back to 
Thee. And Thou hast sent the Maid to drive 
back this lost one to Thee, and to drive us stray- 
ing Englishmen back to England, and thy be- 
wildered Christendom home to Thee.” 


CHAPTER IX, 


percival’s story. 



N Monday, the 8th of May, 1429, in the 


chill and darkness of our prison we saw, 
through a little breathing slit in the wall, the re- 
flection of the glittering armor and the white 
banners; we heard the sound of the trumpets, 
and from a church near at hand came the music 
of the canticles, and above, the eager trampling 
of many feet, and the joyous tumult of many 
voices, all gathered around the deliverer, the 


Maid. 


"‘The Maid,” that was her name. She was 
seldom called anything else. 

It was strange to hear all this exulting move- 
ment, and to see the flashing of the reflected 
sunshine on the wall of the cell, and we captive 
in the darkness, knowing it was May and sun- 
shine outside. 

To lie there a bound and fettered captive, 
and yet to find the captivity a liberation from 
the more galling fetters which had bound me to 
what seemed a duty, and yet a revolt against 
the will of God ! 


158 


yo^jv THE MAID. 


Easier, indeed, to have all His billows and 
waves go over me bound thus to the rock of His 
will, than to have to swim vainly yet inevitably 
against the current of His will. 

With Owen it was far otherwise. 

And then, besides, for him, it was May in 
the world of his life. 

Love and hope and Cecilie were in that 
world of sunshine outside. 

And to him this defeat, with all its pain and 
humiliation and woe, made the earth seem like 
a kingdom of order confused into a chaos. 

Rudely turned from his creed of England 
and success. Providence and magic and prayer 
and patriotism all seemed to him inextricably 
entangled. 

“Listen to their screams,” he said, “there is 
not one among them that can give a real cheer. 
Their very bells cannot ring out an honest peal 
like English bells. It is all clash and crash, and 
jar of separate, dissonant voices, and all, no 
doubt, like so many heathen idolaters worship- 
ping that sorceress, kissing her bridle, pressing 
their sick to touch the hem of her garment. 
And she three months since keeping a few sheep, 
and spinning her poor peasant clothes in her 
father’s hut ! That is what the devil can give if 
only one gives one’s self heartily to him.” 

“There is no degradation in keeping sheep,’* 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 1 59 

I said. King David began with that, and with 
a few.” 

“ For heaven’s sake do not be moderate, 
Percival. It shoots through every fibre of my 
foot. If one cannot swear a little, what is there 
left? They say this Jeanne like the rest calls 
us godons, because we swear pretty freely. That 
she will not suffer her soldiers to swear by any- 
thing more spiritual than their batons, the hypo- 
crites ! At all events, we English are no hypo- 
crites. Neither the saints nor the devil can 
accuse us of that.” 

The tumult in the streets died away, and the 
long hours wore slowly on in the chill and the 
dusk. 

Then we fell into talk about old times, and 
the boyish recollections roused him. 

But it was naturally much more wearisome 
for him than for me. 

He had so much more to be impatient for. 

And he had no work or occupation ; whereas 
he himself, his wound, his well-being, his fret- 
ting, his happiness, were full occupation for me. 

And in this isolation it was a happiness to 
feel the ties of the old memories and the bond 
of brotherhood press closer. 

He talked now and then of Cecilie ; and that 
was hardest to me, becuse he spoke of her often- 
est with a kind of playful protective fondness, 


l6o yOAN THE MAID. 

as of a creature whose happiness was necessarily 
secured by having won him ; as of a jewel, 
indeed, but one that was enriched by its setting* 
whereas to me, Pagan idolater that I was, all the 
sky seemed but the setting to that one star. 

He even compared her to other ladies, al- 
ways to her advantage, it is true. If she was 
less brilliant than such an one, she was more 
restful ; if she was less courtly than another, she 
was fairer. Whereas, to me, to compare her 
with any besides was like taking a Madonna 
down from the altar to place it beside a Diana, 
or a dog. Diana or dog mattered little as to the 
irreverence of the comparison ! 

Cecilie was sacred. To displace her from 
her shrine was sacrilege. 

He spoke even of the color of her eyes and 
hair. 

He thought them more beautiful than any 
he had seen. 

But Cecilie was Cecilie to me ; and thus to 
detach one part of her from another seemed like 
turning her into tapestry and cataloguing the 
stitches. 

Yet he loved her truly , and his love and his 
character, himself^ were what she has chosen. 

If love, then, for him, meant rather gathering 
her life into his, than giving himself to her, such 
giving was what she chose. And in the end, love 


PERCIVAVS STORY. l6l 

being true, must, for her and for him have its 
own double life, must, sooner or later, attain to 
its own essential life of sacrifice. 

As we sate together there, my chief thought 
was how I could best help them. 

The sense of having been lifted, or plunged, 
to a life beyond wants and fears, sometimes 
filled me with a strange glow of exultation. 

But there was not much time for such 
thinking. 

On the evening of that Monday we were 
roughly summoned from our dungeon, to be 
taken to our final destination. 

We had been captured by Sir Tanneguy du 
Chatel, a gentleman whose castle was on the 
borders of Lorraine, and there we were to be 
held in durance until we could be exchanged or 
ransomed. 

It was humiliating to be driven past our own 
smouldering forts and bastions; but Owen’s 
lameness and the difficulty of supporting him 
gave me little time for observation. 

That night, when all was still, no enemy near, 
and therefore no watch, I heard a creeping and 
stirring, as of some wild animal in the long 
grass on the edge of the camp, near which we 
happened to be. 

In another minute the tarniliar grey head of 
Peter appeared quite close at hand. 


i 62 


yOAN- THE MAID. 


Owen, happily, was asleep. 

Our colloquy was very brief. 

I told him the name of the seigneur whose 
prisoners we were, and of his castle. 

He said he felt sure of being able to reach 
the country still in English hands, and so, to get 
to the English coast. 

I told him to spare no gold for Owen’s ran 
som, and then, first, I told to any human being, 
the purpose which had rapidly ripened in my 
own mind during our days in the cell in Orleans, 
that I meant to become either a monk or a 
priest, that all lands were henceforth the same 
to me, and that, therefore, I needed no ransom. 

“All lands might be the same to Master 
Owen ! ” growled Peter ; “ but to you every stone 
and tree of the old place, every face in the old 
home is dear.” 

“ And will be eternally,” I said. “ And 
therefore I mean what I say. Owen is wounded, 
and will chafe himself to death if not soon set 
free.” 

A French soldier near us made an uneasy 
movement and murmur in his sleep, and Peter 
took warning and disappeared. 

The next morning, when Owen awoke, he 
was greatly rejoiced to hear of Peter’s projected 
journey home. 

His spirits rose at once. He was sure Peter’s 


PERCIVAUS STOR Y. 1 63 

will, SO provokingly stubborn when it crossed 
one’s own, would by the slow weight of it carry 
him through all opposition. 

In a few weeks we should be free, this 
wretched net of sorcerers would be broken, the 
interrupted conquest would be resumed, and we 
should, after a brief final struggle, return with 
victorious spoils to Danescombe. 

These fluttering transient hopes, which lure 
us on from bush to bush, hopping and chirping 
out of sight of difficulties, I suppose, have their 
share in our training. 

But the great immortal hope, which dares to 
look down into the darkness and evil and fathom 
it, because of the dawn which it sees from its 
mountain height, is more. 

And so we went to the castle on the edge of 
the forests and mountains of the Vosges, which 
was to be our prison. 

It stood on a rocky height, and consisted of 
a heavy solid old keep, with a range of new 
buildings in a more modern style. 

The keep was to be our prison. The newer 
buildings were the mansion of the chatelain, and 
the fair young chatelaine. 

Our first lodging was a cell with a slit for a 
window, which, nevertheless, was luxurious com- 
pared with our dungeon at Orleans, or, indeed, 
with many a monastic cell, because it let in sun* 


164 


yOAN THE MAID. 


shine and fresh air frona the wide range of forest 
below. When we lay on the floor on the prison- 
ers’ straw beds, beautiful visions of stars crossed it, 
and of gold and crimson clouds at sunrise. And 
by climbing on the bench, which was our table; 
we could see the foldings of the wooded hills. 

First of all a little child of seven years old 
came to see us, a child like the angel in the cor- 
ner of our mother’s Italian picture. Her eyes 
were of a limpid brown, such as I have seen in 
our moorland streams when they were perfectly 
clear and the sun strikes them as they fall in 
heavy curves into a dark pool. How can any- 
one call such eyes black ? 

Black is the death of every color, while such 
eyes have in them the birth or possibility of 
every color. The child’s were not brilliant or 
sparkling, they were luminous, as with light from 
within ; very grave, yet with a wonderful capa- 
bility of gladness in them, something which was 
more than a smile, rather like the music of a 
child’s laugh, sudden and spontaneous. Yet the 
usual expression was of sadness, or rather of for- 
lornness, of a sorrow which must be in some way 
belonging to humanity, being far too ripe for the 
heart of a child. 

At first she said scarcely anything, only 
brought us flowers in heaps, not in her hands, 
but in her arms. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


165 


Owen sang songs to her and made garlands 
for her, and she let him laugh and play with her, 
in her grave way. But it was curious that she 
always brought the flowers to me. 

She spoke French, but with an accent which 
seemed foreign, though not English. 

I was afraid to question her. The creature 
seemed so spiritual and grave, such a blending 
of child and angel, and withal of something 
which made me think of legends of water-sprites 
who yearn wistfully for human love and a hu- 
man soul, that I had a vague fear she might van- 
ish like a questioned ghost, if her nature were 
peered into. 

To Owen, who plied her at first with many a 
merry riddle, she vouchsafed no information. 

At last, one day she came without her flow- 
ers, looking strangely pale and languid, and 
seemed to yearn for some motherly arms to rest 
on. She let me take her on my knee, and soon 
the eyelids drooped, and the languid head sank 
on my shoulder, and she fell into an uneasy 
sleep. 

An hour or two passed, and the dusk was 
falling, and I began to fear she would be missed, 
when the vesper bell woke her. 

“You will be missed, little one,” I raid. 

“ There is no one to miss me,” she .said, “ my 
grandfather is at the chase.” 


i66 


yOAJV THE MAID, 


Just then the sound of horns and of the bay- 
ing of dogs came echoing up the valley, and she 
sprang up hastily and crept away. 

But at the door she turned, with a strange 
wistful look in her dark eyes. 

“ I shall come again,” she said, smiling a 
strange little smile at me. “ Never ask for me, 
but be sure I shall come again.” 

But, after that, day after day passed, and she 
never came. And all that time nothing varied 
the monotony of our days-, and very weary they 
seemed. 

“ I had begun to think this cell might be a 
good novitiate for a monk’s life,” I said to Owen 
one day; “but I had not thought the monk’s 
cell would be without the child.” 

We spent much time in speculating who our 
mysterious little guest could be, when, one 
morning early, when our morning portion was 
brought, with the old warder, who was the only 
member of the household we had seen, appeared 
a lady dressed in rich velvets and laces and jew- 
els, but with her black hair falling loosely around 
her, a tall stately woman, with eyes like our lit- 
tle angel’s in color, and at first, I thought in ex- 
pression. 

With a sweet graciousness, not, however, 
without a loftiness which marked the condescen- 
sion she felt her visit to be, she said — 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


167 


My little daughter is ill, and moans for you ; 
at least, for one of you. How shall I know 
which ? ” 

“ It must be my brother,” I said : “ he played 
and sang with her.’’ 

She hesitated a little. 

“ Excuse a sick child’s illusions,” she replied, 
“the little one said, ‘ L’infelice — the unhappy 
one. The one whose eyes understand mine,’ 
Poor little one,” she smiled, “who has never 
known a care or a sorrow. You had better both 
come,” she concluded. 

And we followed her up the dark winding 
staircase of the keep across the halls of the new- 
er mansion, through richly furnished room after 
room, which, to our eyes, so long used to bare 
stone walls, seemed sumptuous as a palace, until 
on a large bed, draped with crimson damask, we 
saw once more the lovely child’s face. 

She smiled sweetly, and stretched out her 
hands to us both, but she would not be content 
without my sitting on a chair by the bedside 
while she held my hand. 

“ I shall bring you flowers again, one day,” 
she said. “ I have told them, and they say I 
may, and now I shall get well.” 

She seemed quite content while I sate beside 
her, just as our mother used to be. A rest came 
into the wistful eyes. But I, who thought she 


yOAJ\r THE MAID. 


1 68 

was sealed for death and heaven, found it hard 
to keep back my tears so as to be calm, the very 
condition I felt of my remaining. 

But the little maid was right. The flush and 
anxiety passed from her face, and she did get 
well. 

It was a great mystery to me at first, how a 
child with a mother, and a mother so beautiful 
and gracious, could have that forlorn, orphaned 
look in her eyes. 

It was only by slow degrees that the riddle 
read itself to me. 

We were left much alone, we two. 

Gracious and sweet as she was, the Lady 
Blanche du Chatel seemed to find an insupport- 
able weariness in the slow monotonous hours by 
the sick-bed. She was always coming and go- 
ing, at first, on errands for the child, but, before 
long, going more than coming, so that the little 
one ceased to look for her. 

Movement and change and homage were es- 
sential to her. 

And so it came about that the child and I 
were left to each other, while Owen and the 
lady with old Sir Tanneguy and the retainers 
and gentlemen who constituted the little court, 
vyere in the hall or at the chase or in the gardens. 
Everywhere to the Lady Blanche the world must 
be a little court, of which she was the centre. 






169 


AncTt^o the child came to forlorn un- 

motherfr^i^^^l^^^^p^!^t^(0l^e:^^apart. 

The ext^?h^1^d*ke«t«6sr‘t>etween the child and 


the mother was so great that it was some time 
before I unraveled the deep inward dissimilarity 
it veiled. 

It is perplexing when kindred is thus in the 
outer shell and not at all in the inward organi- 
zation. 

For the outer shell of manner as well as of 
form were alike — the interest in those around, 
the love of beauty. But in the child all these 
were the true end ; in the mother they were the 
instruments to the one end of her own personal 
reign. 

Not that she deliberately designed conquests, 
but she required subjects as instinctively as all 
human beings require bread. 

In the child’s eyes there was the wistful look 
as of a forlorn fairy creature yearning for human 
love and a human soul. In the Lady Blanche’s 
eyes, of the same limpid luminous brown, there 
was at times a wild elfish spell, as of a being of 
another race set on exciting an affection she 
could not return. 

The lady and Owen drew as naturally to 
each other as the child and I. Our captivity 
was certainly over, and, bound by our knightly 
word, we simply waited to be ransomed At 
8 


I/O 


^OAJV THE MATD. 


first I feared little for Owen in the matter. 
Knowing of old his own instinct of charming, I 
felt the combatants equally matched. At the 
bottom of his heart I felt sure there was the 
true loyal love to Cecilie, the inconstancy was 
merely on the surface. 

Inconstancy in the depths was a thing I did 
not fear. It was inconceivable to me ; like a 
doubt of immortality. To be the same being, 
and not love the old love was, I thought, simply 
impossible. 

And inconstancy to Cecilie was a double im- 
possibility. 

The lady needed a court. Owen needed an 
interest, and for the moment they suited each 
other. 

But the combat was more unequal than I 
thought. 

The Lady Blanche was of a culture and a 
beauty rare anywhere ; and, to us northern is- 
landers, doubly perilous because of its novelty 
Pallid, with a rich brown glow, for color to com 
pare with her you went, unconsciously, not to 
lilies and rosebuds, but to marbles and ivories 
and velvets, and all gorgeous things in kings' 
palaces. Slow and languid in her ordinary move^ 
ments, from the slow droop and lifting of the 
veined eyelids and dark lashes, to the gliding 
noiseless walk which scarcely made her silken 


PEI^CIVArS STORY, I /I 

robe rustle, there were yet in her eyes surprises 
of sudden fire, as if a hill covered with dovelike 
woods had for an instant poured from its heart 
a volume of flame ; and at instants she had a 
swiftness of motion like a river falling with a 
smooth sudden flash from pool to pool. 

And then the world she knew was so much 
larger and older than ours, that, although of the 
same age as ourselves, beside her we were like 
boys at school. 

Florence and our western coasts were some 
centuries apart in those days, and the Lady 
Blanche was a Florentine. 

Pictures such as made the one treasure of our 
childhood were familiar to her in palace and 
church as hawthorns or primroses to us. 

Her own castle, which to us seemed so regal, 
to her was but as a salvage of a few fragments of 
the splendors she had lived among 

And, as to books, though she did not care to 
read, the perfume of the Italian literature was 
on her. 

She had lived familiarly by the sources of 
which our poets had drawn. Dante and the 
primeval fountains were already voices out of 
the past to her, and Petrarch, with his smooth 
broad streams of classical eloquence, had reflect- 
ed the life of her girlhood. 

The insensible perfume of an ancient civiliza- 


172 


THE MAID. 


iion was around her, and beside her we and ours 
seemed like children of the moors and forests. 

She spoke with a condescending tolerance of 
France and Sir Tanneguy’s chateau. What 
would she have thought of our old castle and 
the fishing village, or even the manor and the 
^bbey of Abbots Weir? 

So, at first unperceived by me, the silken fet- 
ters and the spells were woven around Owen, 
which made England seem to him as a foreign 
land. 

My life also at this time led me somewhat 
apart from his. 

Two things occupied me, the study for holy 
orders, and the companionship of the child 
Beatrice. 

For at length I had communicated to Owen 
my intention to enter the priesthood, and the 
Cur^ of Domremy helped me with my little be- 
ginnings of Latin. 

And the child Beatrice and I had one great 
sympathy among the many things that made us 
friends. 

She had conceived a great love and worship 
for Jeanne La Pucelle. 

She alone of all in the castle. 

And, indeed, with the Maid (is it not so with 
all the saints?) one of the most remarkable 
things was the way in which, like a touchstone, 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


173 


she tested the true and simple from the false and 
artincial, the pure in purpose from those sunk in 
the illusions of self. 

Old Sir Tanneguy had a certain chivalrous 
loyalty for her ; he would suffer no light word to 
be spoken of her. Yet a certain aristocratic im- 
patience of her peasant origin, with a masculine 
distrust of her military judgment kept him cool. 

But the Lady Blanche barely deigned to re- 
cognize her. It was too late, she thought, for 
Deborah or the Amazons, or, indeed, for St. 
Catherines or St. Ursulas, to be born, or proba- 
bly for St. Catherine or St. Michael to interest 
themselves very vividly in terrestrial affairs. 

Visions, came in the night, or, at best, in the 
dusk of dawn. 

No doubt the poor girl believed herself in- 
spired. Such visionaries were not uncommon in 
convents, and Domremy was an ignorant and 
superstitious region, under the shadow of ancient 
forests. 

And no doubt the court were glad enough to 
have any fancy or any standard round which 
France would rally to her king. 

Also, no doubt, the stars had great influence. 
She believed learned astrologers had prophesied 
from remarkable conjunctions or appositions of 
the planets, that something marvellous might be 
looked for. 


174 


yOA// THE MAID. 


And thus, all these things working together, 
the influences of the stars, the weakness and the 
straits of the court, the misery and ignorance of 
the people, the visionary exaltations of the poor 
peasant girl, the superstition of the soldiery, — 
French and English — this remarkable good for- 
tune at the siege of Orleans, and also, probably, 
a certain fascination and ability in the Maid, 
who, she believed, was quite blameless and vir- 
tuous, there was nothing to be surprised at in 
the turn things had taken; 

But, for her own part, she would certainly 
lend no countenance to such illusions. 

She thought such fantastic fervors always led 
to reactions of cold. 

And, moreover, she had no idea of people 
being lifted out of their places — a girl into a 
man’s armor, a peasant to an establishment and 
attire fit for a countess. 

At Owen’s theory of magic or witchcraft she 
laughed. 

She did not deny that magic was possible to 
those who had a profound knowledge of the oc- 
cult powers of nature, and of the stars. But there 
was plenty of range to explain everything con- 
nected with Jeanne on the ordinary human level, 
without bringing in either the saints or the 
rlevil. 

She knew that the Bastard of Orleans and 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


175 


the young Duke d’Alengon thought much of 
her. But that proved little. Old captains 
and young princes of the blood, if you found 
the clue, could often be led as easily as chil- 
dren. 

She also knew that Gerson, Chancellor of the 
University of Paris, and other theologians had 
sanctioned her mission. But she thought ‘ittle 
of that. They were not men of the world. La 
Tremouille and the courtiers hated her; and she 
believed the Archbishop of Rheims, Chancellor 
of the kingdom, and an astute politician, only 
half liked the whole thing, and would withdraw 
his support at the first seemly opportunity. 
Not that she blamed the Maid for that. Each 
must play his own game, and she had better 
look to hers. 

The Maid had better be content with her 
fame, and retire on the royal gifts. She might 
become quite a person of importance at Dorn- 
remy. 

And by venturing more she risked all. 

Risked all ! 

What was the Lady Blanche’s “ all ” to the 
Maid? 

Jeanne’s “all ” was all God’s will, the saving 
of all France. 

But to explain this to the lady I should have 
needed a language far more incomprehensible to 


176 


yOAiV THE MAID. 


her than her sweet and smooth Italian was to 
me. 

So the child and I kept our own counsel, and 
together, in our rambles through field and for- 
est, gleaned what we could about the childhood 
and the home of the Maid. 


CHAPTER X. 


percival’s story. 

r HE little homestead of Jeanne la Pucelle 
was standing unchanged in the village 
street of Domremy. Only last midsummer she 
had been going in and out of the cottage-door, 
no dreamer, always busy, chiefly near her 
mother, for she was the eldest daughter. 

It was a marvellous interest for me, who had 
seen her as an Angel of Peace, and an Angel of 
War, a whole city flocking around her feet as 
sheep used to do in the village-pasture, secure 
in her mere presence, a victorious army spell- 
bound into inaction before her, a defeated nation 
enkindled into fearless valor by her, to come 
among these simple people who loved her, and 
to the homely places where she had lived as a 
child, where La Pucelle d’Orleans was known by 
a pet name as Jeannette Dare, or Rom^e. 

The first time I saw her village it was even- 
ing, and the river was winding like a silver cord 
among the meadows. In “ that valley of colors’' 
the countless flowers of spring had not yet faded. 
From the meadows the hill sloped up softly to 
8 


178 


JOAN THE MAID. 


the edge of the forest, divided into patches of 
corn and hemp-land or vineyard. Beyond, the 
forest of oak stretched to the hill-tops, — ancient 
oaks, such as ours in England. 

The cottage was at the end of the village ; 
the little farm of thirty acres was her mother’s 
inheritance. It sloped from the quiet river up 
the hill to the edge of the forest. 

The meadows by the river-side were common 
pasture. Sometimes Jeanne had taken her turn 
in guarding the village flocks and herds there. 
Sometimes she had helped her father with the 
plough or cart in the hemp-fields. Most of her 
time, as the eldest girl, she had spent with her 
mother, preparing the family meals, washing, 
and often spinning, late into the night, to make 
the wool of their own flocks into clothing for 
her brothers and sisters. 

Simple as the life was, it was full of the foun- 
tains of all poetry. And Jeanne had the opened 
eyes which see all the fountains. 

God was in all things for her, and therefore 
nothing was common-place to her. 

Love was in her heart to all creatures, there- 
fore no creature was common or unclean to her. 
Moreover, having open eyes, the range of the 
world open to her was not narrow. 

War was there, with its terrible revelations 
of other lands and races, and its opening up of 


PERCIVAUS STORY. 1 79 

human life from its heights of sacrifice to its 
depths of humiliation and horror. 

Once her family had had to fly from Dom- 
remy for some days to escape the soldiery ; and 
often fugitives from ruined homes passed through 
the village. 

Many a time the Maid gave up her bed in 
her sleeping-chamber with the one little square 
window which looked across her father’s garden 
to the church, to some destitute wanderers, and 
passed the night by the chimney-corner of the 
dwelling-room outside. 

And the dear animals were there to serve and 
be served, the poor mysterious creatures, so like 
us and so unlike us! She fed the calves, and 
milked the cows, and was recognized by the 
kind eyes of the gentle tame beasts, and as a 
child felt herself a power to guard and guide the 
silly sheep and lambs. 

There is wonderful teaching in all these 
things to those who can learn ; not teaching they 
can utter in words, but which goes down into 
the inmost being and grows in spiritual bone 
and marrow. 

And to her, her own peasant garments were 
no mere prosaic manufacture sold in stalls or 
streets at so much an ell. She had seen the 
wool shorn from the sheep and lambs, — the 
sheep dumb before her shearers ; she had gath- 


i8o 


^OAAT THE MAID. 


ered the flax, when its blue flowering time had 
passed, and spun it by her mother’s side. The 
symbols of this wonderful world were hidden 
from her by no vulgar artificial life. It is the 
factitious splendors that hide the beauty and 
the depths from us, not the lowly labors. 

It was little to her that she could not read or 
write. As she said to some divines who were 
catechising her, “ Messtre, my King has other 
books than those you wot of'" 

And then, quiet and peaceful as her little 
native valley of the Meuse was, her father’s lit- 
tle farm of thirty acres touched on two worlds of 
mystery. 

The hemp-fields sloped up to the edge of the 
primeval oak-forest, to the Bois Chesnu, whose 
origin no man knew. And their little garden 
bordered on the cemetery close under the 
church. 

As they say it is at Nazareth, the home of 
the Holy Childhood, and by the Sea of Galilee, 
the wilderness and the solitary place came close 
to the dwellings of men. 

The peace of the flowery meadows, flooded 
and fed by the river every early spring, and the 
busy life of the tilled fields touched close on the 
mystery of ancient forests, where a few minutes 
brought you into dusk and loneliness, out of the 
thought and sight of men. Mountains, and the 


PERCI VAL'S S TOR Y, 1 8 1 

sea, and forests, it seems to me, bring the unity 
and grandeur of God close to the little divided 
life of man. 

And close to the little garden where she 
grew and gathered the herbs or flowers for festi- 
vals, lay the resting-place of the dead. 

Not that I ever heard this was much to 
Jeanne. She had not lost any dear to her. 
None had gone from her house to be laid under 
that turf. 

And to her the departed were not there. 
They were in the land of the living. 

They were nearer to her in the church than 
in the churchyard ; by the altar than by the 
grave. 

The forest also brought to her the ghosts of 
the old Pagan Creed. The elves were believed 
still to dance under the Ladies’ Tree (though 
Jeanne said she had never seen them). The 
sacred well of the ancient heathen tribes was 
still exorcised and blessed every spring. 

And the Cur6 taught her the legends of the 
Saints. Antioch and Syria and Alexandria 
and Egypt were household words to her through 
her own especial saints, Catherine of Alexandria 
and Margaret of Antioch. Even the names of 
Socrates and Plato came to her world, through 
the Virgin Egyptian Princess who learned that 
there was •^ore wisdom in the Child Jesus than 


i 82 


yOAN THE MAID. 


in all the grand old sages she had been taught 
to revere. The shadow of the old Roman em- 
pire also fell on Jeanne through the Roman 
governor of Antioch who sentenced sweet St. 
Margaret to die. And the Cur6 who taught her 
about the Saints taught her also the history of 
France. 

To her, France was no mere piecing together 
of states and lordships. It was one sacred king- 
dom, it was a violated Fatherland, the heart of 
the holy kingdom of God. The king was the 
type of all royalty, the elect representative of 
“ Messire” the King of the Heavens. From 
first to last, though she could bear in silence any 
insult uttered against herself, she would kindle 
and rise against any insult to her king. 

She was beloved in her village as no egotist 
absorbed in his own dream was ever loved. Not 
a trace of the envy which besets small communi- 
ties, when one rises above the hereditary level, 
seemed to cling about Jeanne, among her kin- 
dred and companions, so entirely unpretending 
had she been, never wanting anything for her- 
self, always ready to succor all. To them she 
was, as they said, “ a very good girl, simple, and 
pleasant, and sweet.” She delighted, indeed, 
greatly to go to church, and sometimes they 
used to smile at her for being so very pious. 

“ She could spin,” she said (almost her only 


PEKCIVArs STORY. 1 83 

boast at her trial), as well as any woman in 
Rouen. 

Flocks, and herds, and household cares could 
be entrusted to her. She would not let the 
creatures stray while she dreamed, or let the 
bread overbake, or the fire go out. 

She was beautiful, and . strong, and tall, with 
dark expressive eyes, a high forehead, small 
hands and feet ; and she could run and dance as 
well as any, and weave garlands under the “ Fair 
May” tree. As she grew older she did not care 
very much for games. But little was known in 
the village about her visions. 

One boy remembered how, when he was a 
little child and sick, Jeanne had nursed him 
patiently and tenderly till he got well. 

The bell-ringer could tell how she gave him 
once some little cakes (Junes) because he had 
forgotten to ring the church-bells which made 
her know the sacred hours when to kneel and 
pray with other Christians, in the fields, and she 
wanted him never to forget again. 

Church bells were always a peculiar delight 
to her. And it was well for her. For the time 
came when for terrible months they were all 
the religious rites left to her, the only signs 
that linked her solitude to the Church Uni- 
versal. 

Another could remember her giving up her 


yOAAT THE MAID 


184 

bed to some poor fugitive, and spending the 
night by the fireside in the outer room. 

All could recall her spinning and working by 
her mother’s side, skilful at the distaff, no 
dreamer, busy and capable and strong. But the 
mem.ories were chiefly of her love of prayer, and 
her readiness to help, — of little gifts and kind- 
nesses and services, for Jeanne was one of those 
who, however poor, had always something to 
give. 

Yet dearly as she loved the young girls her 
companions, and dearly as they loved her, 
Haumette, who sometimes shared her bed in 
her little chamber, and wept so bitterly when 
she went away, — Guillemette, and especially lit- 
tle Mengette, her pet and darling, they could 
none of them tell much about her visions and 
voices. She never prattled about her plans. 
She had the gift of silence. Her companions 
knew she delighted to be at church, and would 
often kneel in the fields as if before God,” and 
they had seen her often in tears at her devotions. 
Sometimes, boys and girls as they all were, they 
would laugh at her for being devout beyond 
her years. But she never justified herself by 
speaking of her revelations ; not even in confes- 
sion, or to her parents. 

Perhaps her reticence was inherited from her 
father, who loved her with that tender sternness 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


85 


of paternal love which would have made him 
drown her with his own hands rather than let 
her go forth unsheltered among the soldiers, and 
which afterwards, it is said, broke his heart, when 
she was burned, so that he scarcely survived her. 
While from her mother, Isabelle Rom^e the 
peasant-heiress, perhaps came the fire, steady and 
glowing, which kept the mother’s heart warm 
through twenty-five years of wrong and widow- 
hood to right her daughter’s memory at last. 

It was from her mother she learned the 
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Hail Mary, 
besides all the unspoken sermons good daughters 
learn from good mothers. 

It was afterwards, from the confessions wrung 
from her in the interrogations of the prosecution 
that I learned how her “voices” came to her, 
and how, in the silence, her vocation deepened. 
It was afterwards that I learned the story of her 
visions and her voices. 

It was drawn from her by the interrogations 
of the divines at Poitiers, and of her enemies at 
Rouen, and never varied. 

She was thirteen years of age when she first 
heard a voice of God which called her. It was 
on a summer-day, at noon, in the garden of her 
father beside the church, on her right hand. 
“A great light came with it;” she “seldom 
heard the voice without the light.” 


1 86 yOAN THE MAID, 

The first time, she was amazed and sore 
afraid But she took courage and found the 
voice was “ worthy.” The third time she knew 
it was the voice of an angel. Before long she 
found it was the Archangel Michael, mighty in 
battle, and guardian of France. 

At first the only command was to be a good 
child and go often to church. Then he told hei 
of the piteous state of the kingdom of France, 
and that one day she would have to go thither. 

A multitude of angels were around him, and 
when they vanished, she wept, and longed that 
they would take her with them. St. Michael 
told her St. Catherine and St. Margaret would 
come and tell her what she should do. And 
they came : the virgin-martyrs whose stories, 
brought by Crusaders from the mystic East, the 
Cure had told her. 

The light unfolded into glorious crowned 
faces and forms, the voices into a clear com- 
mand. She was to go to France and save the 
kingdom. 

The voices were very beautiful and sweet, 
“ moult douces et belles.” She oftenest spoke 
of them as “her voices.” And thenceforth she 
dedicated herself in perpetual maidenhood to 
God. But still she told no one, until the hour 
had come. 

But the misery of France deepened. The 


PERCIVAnS STORY. 


187 


divisions spread ; the Burgundians and English 
overran the land. Her king Charles was called 
in mockery the king of Bourges.” 

The voices became clearer and more frequent 
two or three times a week, until at last they 
told her distinctly to go to Vaucouleurs, the 
nearest town in the valley, to the Captain 
Robert de Baudricourt, who would give her men 
to escort her to the king. 

With the definite call came the terror. The 
joyful heavenly light and the beautiful sweet 
voices were driving her into the wilderness. 
The desert, in all its dearth and ruggedness, 
exile from mother, father, home, friends, lay 
before her ; so, that “ had it not been the will of 
God, she had rather have been torn by four 
horses than have gone forth to France.” 

But there was no doubt and no lingering. 
“ She could no longer stay where she was.” 

The hour had come ; and, as her first step, 
she went from home to stay with her uncle 
Durand Laxart, at the village of Burey-en- 
Vaux. 

Perhaps she felt some inward sympathy with 
him. He was the first who believed in her 
, visions. 

After staying a week with him she told him 
the commands under which she believed she 
lay 


i88 


JOAN THE MAID. 


He was amazed ; but she reminded him of 
the prophecy current in the district, that a 
young maiden from the Marches of Lorraine 
was to undo the mischief another woman (Isa- 
bella, the wicked queen-mother) had wrought. 

He was moved by her conviction. He con- 
sented to take her to the Sieur de Baudricourt. 
This was in May: one of the Maid’s four Mays 
— at Vaucouleurs, at Orleans, at Compi^gne, 
and at Rouen. 

The peasant uncle led the peasant girl, in 
her woven red woollen jacket into the presence 
of the governor. 

She knew the governor from others “ by her 
voices.” 

She “ came from the Lord,” she said. “ The 
kingdom belonged not to the Dauphin but to 
the Lord, from whom the Dauphin held it ‘ en 
commende that by mid-Lent deliverance 
would be brought to him, that the kingdom 
would be his, and that she herself would lead 
him to his consecration and crowning.” 

“ Who is thy Lord ? ” said the Sire de Baudri- 
court. 

“ The King of heaven,” she said. 

The governor considered her mad, and rec- 
ommended her uncle to box her ears and take 
her back to her father. 

Yet it is probable, that even in that first inter* 


I 


PEKCIVAUS STORY. 1 89 

view she won, among the knights and soldiers 
who stood near, the first believers in her mis- 
sion. 

She returned to her parents, and from that 
time her father grew anxious and watched her, 
preferring her death to such dishonor as her 
going forth unsheltered to the army. 

They tried to persuade her to marry. 

But they dealt gently with her. Perhaps all 
the time her mother, who survived to clear her 
name to all the world, believed in her ; perhaps 
even her father, whom afterwards her death 
brought to the grave, believed her, and therefore 
shrank and held her back. At last they suffered 
her to go and stay again with her Uncle Laxart, 
to take care of her aunt who was ill. 

She felt too surely that this was a farewell 
to her home. But she said so to no one. 

Only afterwards she sent to beg her parents’ 
pardon for departing without their leave. 

Yet, she said, “had I had a hundred fathers 
and mothers, and been a king’s daughter, I must 
have gone.” 

Her uncle took her again to Vaucouleurs. 
There she lived with the wife of a Cartwright, 
called Henri le Royer. “A simple, good, gen- 
tle girl,” he said, “helping his wife with the spin- 
ning and housework,” and spending what time 
she could on her knees in prayer, especially at 


1 90 yOAN THE MAID. 

early mass and before the image of the Virgin 
and Child in the crypt under the church. 

She was bound to a hard combat, she knew, 
and in the death-like shadows and silence of the 
crypt she gathered strength. What is all this 
earth but a crypt to those who have heard the 
heavenly voices and seen the glorious forms of 
the victors crowned ? 

Her mission was no secret now. 

A young man-at-arms, Jean de Metz, who 
had no doubt seen her before the governor, 
came to speak with her. 

“ Ma mie,” he said, “ what are you doing 
here ? Must the king be driven from the king- 
dom and we all become English ? ” 

“ I am come hither,” she said, “ to bid Rob- 
ert de Baudricourt take me to the king. But he 
takes no heed of me or my words ; and, neverthe- 
less, before mid-Lent I must needs be before 
the king, though I should wear out my legs to 
the knee. For none else in the world — kings, 
nor dukes, nor daughter of the King of Scots,* 
can recover the kingdom, and there is no help 
but in me. And certes, I had far rather spin 
beside my poor mother, for this is not my state 
of life ; but I must needs go and do it, because 
my Lord wills it.” 

‘‘ Who is thy Lord ?” said Jean de Metz. 

* Charles had thought of flight to Scotland. 


PEJ^CIVAi:S STORY. 


I9I 


“He is God,” she replied. 

And he, brave and true, believed her, and 
placed his hands in hers, reverently as in a 
priest’s or a feudal lord’s, and swore that, God 
helping, he would take her to the king, “and 
when would she go ? ” 

“ Better now than to-morrow,” she said. 
“ Better to-morrow than the day after.” 

And thus the Maid enlisted the first soldier 
of the army wherewith she was to recover 
France. The second was Bertrand de Bou- 
langy. Both revered her as a saint to the end, 
and said that an evil thought was impossible be- 
side her. 

The belief in her spread and deepened. 

The Duke of Lorraine, who was ill, sent to 
seek her advice, as one endowed with supernatu- 
ral power, and consulted her about his sickness. 
It is said she counselled him to amend his life, 
and to return to his good wife, from whom he 
was separated. 

At length the Governor, the Sieur de Baudri- 
court had to listen. He brought a priest to ex- 
orcise her. 

Jeanne was quite ready for the test ; but she 
gently blamed not the governor but the cure. 
“ He had confessed her,” she said, “ and he 
ought to have known better.” To confess her, 
no doubt, was to justify her. 


192 


yOAN THE MAID 


The cause of the Maid was won. 

The whole of the little town contributed to 
her equipment, uniting their narrow means to 
buy her armor, helmet, hauberk, tunic, and all 
the military equipment it was thought right for 
her to wear. 

One citizen joined with her uncle to buy her 
a horse. 

The governor still delayed, but on the day 
when we English won our last victory, the Bat- 
tle of the Herrings, it is said she went to him 
once more, and said that the Dauphin had sus- 
tained a great injury, and that in the name of 
God she must go. 

“ Go, then,” he said at last, “ and let what 
may come of it.” 

And so, with six men-at-arms, she went forth 
on her perilous way through the disordered land, 
and many of the people wept and followed her 
with supplications and benedictions, and many 
an anxious care. 

But she had no care. Her escort, she felt, 
was more than those six who were in sight. 

o 

“ Her brothers of Paradise were caring for her.” 
And as she went she said, “ It is for this that I 
was born. ' 


CHAPTER XL 


ELAINE’S STORY. 

I T was late in June when Peter the Wright 
came back to us. 

He brought with him a young orphan girl 
from the north-eastern borders of France, near 
Burgundy, to be a daughter to his good wife 
Margery: a quiet, silent, helpful creature, with 
a grave sadness in the dark eyes and the pale 
face and a hopeless yearning as of a life in some 
way closed before it had opened. 

At first Margery’s welcome was not very 
cordial. But the gentle, broken-spirited creature 
by degrees stole into her place in the foster- 
mother’s home and heart. 

She seemed to have a thirst for work, as 
other young creatures for play. No threshold 
was so clean, and no hearth so bright as Mar- 
gery’s. And into the church at all spare hours 
she used to creep, as a dog into the sunshine, or 
a sick child to its mother’s knee. 

From amusements she shrank. At first we 
sought to win her to join the young maidens of 
the manor and the village in dance and song, 
9 


Z94 


yOAAT THE MAID, 


thinking it would in time make her feel less an 
orphan and an exile, 

But though she would not seldom smile, and 
even now and then laugh amid her work, an ir- 
repressible sadness made her eyes fill and her 
lips quiver at any merry-making. Father Adam 
also, who confessed her, generally a friend to all 
healthful play for young creatures, said she were 
better left to herself. 

Peter brought us sad tidings enough. My 
brothers in captivity, Owen wounded, the siege 
of Orleans raised, the armies of England so long 
accustomed to victory beaten back, our leaders 
captive and slain, and all through the magical 
arts of a young peasant-girl, whom rumor de- 
clared to be a sorceress, an unmaidenly creature 
going about with the soldiers, clothed in manly 
armor, in deadly league with Satan and all his 
hosts. 

How else, every one said, could the soldiers 
of Henry V., the victors of Agincourt and Ver- 
neuil, the Conquerors of Normandy and the bet- 
ter part of France, suddenly be checked, and 
baffled, and beaten, without an addition to the 
enemies’ force save this one peasant-maid? 

But sad as Peter’s tidings were, he himself 
was not sad. A strange and unaccountable 
change had come over him. He was grave and 
silent indeed, as usual — more than usual ; but all 


ELAINES STORY. 


195 


the restlessness and irritability had gone from 
his face and bearing, and at times there was an 
upward glance as of one who was not so much 
yearning as seeing. It was as if he had seen a 
vision of angels. 

Peter went far oftener to the church, and his 
bearing towards Father Adam had greatly 
changed. Altogether, there was a softness, and 
a peace, and a humbleness about him, as of one 
who abode under the shadow of some great 
presence. 

Peter was never a man to be questioned. 
But to me his secret soon came out. 

His Book, the Book, the English New Testa- 
ment, was dearer to him than ever. 

And from time to time he asked me to trans- 
late it for the orphan girl Claudette, to whom in 
his broken French he had told many stories 
from it. 

In old days he used to make me choose the 
“ woes” to the Pharisees and hypocrites, “ De- 
part from me ye cursed, in that ye did it not,” 
and his dark eyes would kindle under his bushy 
white eyebrows, as he said, “Yes, He shall 
judge the world in righteousness. Only it is 
long in coming.” 

But now he chose the invitations, the “ Come 
unto Me,” the “ Learn of Me,” the “ Follow 

Me.’ 


196 


yOAAT THE MAID. 


At first I thought it was for the sake of the 
orphan girl who was wont to sit at my feet as I 
read, drinking in every syllable, as if she feared 
to let fall a sacred drop of sacramental wine. 

But one evening, as we sate under the old 
oak of his cottage-door, I saw such a look of ad- 
oration and joy come over the rugged face that 
I could not but speak. 

“ The old Book is dearer than ever to thee,** 
I said. 

“ The same as ever,** he replied, “ and yet 
altogether different, as the world is different, if 
at sunrise you turn to the west or to the east. 

“ I used to have great pride in the woes to 
the Pharisees ; for they, thought I, were the 
worldly priests and friars, and the covetous rich 
men. 

“ But I have found that the Pharisees were 
me^ setting myself above others, and saying, ‘ I 
thank Thee I am not as these.* 

“ But chiefly it is because of this : 

“The Book has ceased to be to me only a 
record of things that are past. It is a revelation 
of the things that always are. 

“ I thought it was a picture-book of olden 
times, and I find it a lifting up here and there of 
a veil over all times from the beginning till to- 
day and for ever. 

“ It is as if you went into a great church full 


ELAINES STORY. 


197 

of what you thought were paintings, on the win- 
dows, and all at once you found they were not 
paintings, but openings through glass, crystal- 
clear into bits of a real world outside. 

“ Think of the difference. 

I see a picture of David, and the sheep- 
folds, and his smiting Goliath. 

I read of Moses bringing water from the 

rock. 

I read of the waves of the Red Sea stand- 
ing up as a crystal wall for the passage of Israel. 

“ I read of the Apostles changed from trem- 
bling fugitives into men without fear, rejoicing 
to be beaten and suffer shame for Christ. 

“ I read of women turning to flight armies 
of the aliens. 

“And all at once, looking out of one of 
these windows, I see David tJiere^ fresh from the 
sheep-folds, with the giant at his feet and the 
hosts fleeing. 

“ I see Moses there^ the waves smitten back, 
the rock smitten into fountains. 

“I see victorious armies kept back as by 
walls of sea, or of fire ; hunted hares turned into 
heroes, by the presence of one poor weak 
woman. 

“ More, unspeakably more ! I see the Image 
of the Lord Christ there, not in stone or wood, 
or dead on a cross, but pleading for reconcilia- 


198 JOAN THE MAID. 

tion at the risk of death, driving away sinful wo- 
men and smiting sinful men into virtue by a 
purity their consciences acknowledge, protecting 
a whole city by a ‘ fear not,’ and all in the like- 
ness of a humble peasant-girl, who confesses her 
sins like any of us, and says always ‘ I am noth- 
ing, but I come from Messire, my king.’ 

“ My king ; yes, her king and ours. 

“ No more a king far off in Galilee, or far up 
in the clouds, but here. 

“ I have seen, I have seen the burnt villages, 
the wasted fields, the murdered women and 
children. For we did evil in France ; we 
wrought ruin. But now, it is no more only God 
in Judea, Christ in Galilee, or in heaven; but 
Christ in France, at Orleans, this May day, and 
we all in His kingdom, as much those of us He 
rebukes and repels as those He sustains and 
succors.” 

“You speak in parables, Peter,” I said. 

“ No parables, mistress,” he said. “ I speak 
of Joan the Maid.” 

And then he told me all the wonderful story, 
and I could not but wonder and believe. 

“ Bnt,” I said, “ what joy for us is this? If 
the Maid is from God, God is against England, 
and we are lost rebels, enemies of heaven.” 

“ God is against us,” he said, “ as a man 
against the son whom he loveth and chasteneth. 


ELAINE'S ST OR V. 


199 


He chasteneth. That means His own hand is 
on us, and that, being true, what does the pain 
matter, or the blows? It is His hand, the 
Father’s! And I had thought, I had moaned, 
that He had left the world alone.” 

“ What does Percival think?” I asked. 

“ Sir Percival does not so much think!' Peter 
replied. He has opened his eyes and he sees!' 

“And Owen?” I said. 

“ Sir Owen thinks as the majority do,’ Peter 
replied. 

“ If this be so,” I said, “ the French prison is 
more freedom to Percival than the English 
camp.” 

And then the old man told me what Perci- 
val had told him that night near Orleans. 

And I was sad : not so much that Percival 
should be a priest, as for that he said that to 
him all lands were alike. 

While to me all lands would indeed have 
been alike, but only with him— or, alas, without 
him. 

Were we, was Cecilie, was I nothing to 
him ?” 

But Peter, answering, I suppose the quiver 
of pain on my face, said, 

“ He did but mean to make his ransoming 
seem of no moment, that all might be spent on 
Sir Owen.” 


200 


yOAN THE MAID. 


And when, that night, as Cecilie and I in 
our little chamber looked out for a last sight of 
the starry sky through the window, round 
which the honeysuckle Percival had planted was 
climbing, and I told her all, she also said,. 

“ He did but mean we should spend all we 
could gather for Owen.” 

“ Ransom Owen ? ” I said, “ and let Percival 
be a prisoner and an exile.” 

She looked up as if quite surprised at my ob- 
jection. 

“ Percival would think it quite natural and 
necessary,” she said. 

To her also, then, it seemed quite natural 
that Percival’s life, or mine, or the whole world’s 
should be poured out in ransom for Owen’s, 
melted like one pearl to enrich the wine-cup of 
his festive life ! 

But what if Percival were, as he was to me, the 
one precious pearl, and Owen’s life the lavish 
wine to dissolve it, and be no better for the waste ? 

Yet in one sense, she was right, this sacrifice 
was natural in the heavenly kingdom. 

In the lower kingdom the lower feeds the 
higher. 

In the higher the higher is sacrificed to the 
lower. 

The mother for the child, the Christ for the 
lost, God for man. 


ELAINE’S STORY. 


201 


Not by any paradox, but by high necessity, 
because in the true life which is love, gain is 
not in getting but in giving. 

Breathing is burning. Growing is expend- 
ing. Dying is the seed bursting the prison of 
the husk. 

Selfishness being death, losing self is life. 

Sacrifice is not a purchase of immunity from 
sacrifice. It is fire, it is liberty, it is life. It is 
all natural in the life of love. 

And every day I had prayed beside the 
mother’s crucifix. And every day I was present 
at the feast which is a sacrifice, at the perpetual 
sacrifice which is the perpetual feast. 

And yet I had been so slow to learn this, es- 
pecially for Percival. 

I chafed and grudged that he the eldest and 
the best should be sacrificed to the youngest 
and the least worthy ; that the fullest love, the 
richest cup, should be Owen’s ; the old lands, Ce- 
cilie’s love, the future of the family ; while Per- 
cival, impoverished, exiled, contentedly aban- 
doned to his sacrifice, should have nothing left 
to give but himself. 

So little did I know what riches and poverty 
were, or what love means. 

But every one acquiesced, easily enough. 
Our aunt and Sir Richard also thought it quite 
natural that their future son-in-law should be 


202 


^0A^r THE MAID. 


considered before Percival ; and if Percival had 
indeed a vocation to the priesthood, what could 
be more convenient and fortunate, and make 
everything fit in better for every one ? 

And so we all gave up what we could ; Ce- 
cilie every one of her girlish trinkets and jewels ; 
all of us lands in mortgage, and whatever luxu- 
ries could be spared. 

And by degrees the ransom was being raised ; 
and in a few weeks, every one trusted, Peter 
would go back to France, find out the castle 
where my brothers were in captivity ; and Owen, 
no doubt, with the stipulation he was not to 
fight against the French, would be restored to 
home and Cecilie — his home, his castle, his 
lands, his bride. 

And Percival? 

He might live for God in some foreign mon- 
astery. 

And I? 

I might die, and before long every one would 
die, and then all things would, no doubt, be set 
right. 


CHAPTER XII, 


percival’s story. 


T last a cold fear began to creep ovei me 



that the spell of the Lady Blanche’s beauty 
and grace were wrapping Owen, like the knights 
in the legends, in an enchantment which would 
make all common life and dear familiar home 
delights tame and cold to him. 

The lady taught him Italian. She said he 
was too gentle and courteous for those northern 
deserts. He should go and take service in Italy, 
where foreign soldiers of valor and conduct 
would always make their mark. 

It was long since we had spoken much of 
home. The present brought such a bewildering 
dazzle of changing pleasures and contrasts ; the 
gay parties at the chase, or the more perilous 
fascination of the lessons in the castle. 

At length, one day a pedler came to the 
castle, with a pack of draperies and luxuries for 
the ladies. His attention seemed fixed in a 
peculiar manner on Owen and me. At first he 
seemed to waver between us. But at last, 
unable to attract Owen, who was occupied in as- 


204 


yOAN THE MAID. 


sisting the Lady Blanche to some momentous 
decision between gold and silver embroidery, 
he directed his efforts to me, and slipped a 
packet into my hand, saying in broken English 
“It is for the brother with the dark eyes— no 
one but him. Give me a token to say to those 
who sent me I have been faithful to my 
trust.” 

A ring of Owen’s lay on the table ; he had 
been thinking of exchanging it. I took it hasti- 
ly, having not a moment for thought, and gave 
it to the man. 

In a short time the pedler departed, declar- 
ing he had a long journey before him and could 
not delay. 

When Owen and I were alone, I gave him 
the packet. 

He changed color; not flushing, but growing 
for a moment, it seemed to me, grey and old, as 
he read the letter. 

“ It is to say they will soon send the ransom 
by Peter,” he said, and then he fell into a muse. 

“ It is perplexing,” he said at last, tossing 
back his hair. “ I had thought ransom was im- 
possible, and I was half thinking of abandoning 
the war and going to serve in Italy, which I 
may do, I believe, when I like, without ransom.” 

I was dumb. 

“You could not but be glad I should aban- 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


205 


don this war,’^ he resumed almost fretfully, 
‘ believing as you and Peter seem to do, that 
this peasant-maid is as an angel of God.” 

“ To abandon the war is one thing,” I re- 
plied ; “ but to abandon England, and home, 
and ” 

” I abandon nothing and no one,” he inter- 
rupted me hastily. “ Of course, Italy was only 
on the way home ; a little way round.” And he 
would say no more. 

That night I had my last conflict on that 
ground concerning Cecilie. 

He had her dear writing; she was no great 
scholar ; and I had seen the precious half-child- 
ish letters I knew so well. 

And to him they seemed not as the blessed, 
inspiring, liberating touch of her kind hand, but 
as a fetter. 

Could it be possible that for his sake and Ce- 
cilie’s, still to “ take care of him” and of her, I 
might yet have to put away the knife and the 
fire from my own heart, to find that the offering 
had been accepted, and that from the heavens 
came a voice bidding me not to take the knife 
or kindle the fire, but to let things be ; to wait 
and watch, and the best for Cecilie — even for 
Owen — might even yet be a rapture of fulfilled 
joy for me ? 

To pour out all the oil for our lamp of life to 


2o6 


THE MAID, 


feed the flame of another life may be worth 
while ; but to pour it into a broken vessel simply 
to be wasted ! 

In loving, we can only really love what really 
exists. If what Cecilie loved proved a dream, 
then she must have been dreaming in so loving, 
and any waking, though it might be thought 
anguish, was better than dreaming. 

Might not the true life for her, as for me, yet 
be used, together to take care of him ? 

There is no mating for creatures really of 
different race. Were not Owen and Cecilie 
really creatures of different spiritual race and 
might not this lady and Owen, charming, delight- 
ing, deceiving, undeceiving, trying, tormenting 
each other as they surely would, be really a 
truer whole, fitting in as broken fragments into 
each other’s characters. 

But, thank God, weak as I was, I had lived 
too much in truth for that lie to live long in 
me. 

Owen was Owen, and no dream ; Cecilie was 
Cecilie, and her love was her very self, no 
dream ; and to take care of Owen meant no love 
of a dream-Owen, however beautiful ; no letting 
go of the real Owen into false and fairy enchant- 
ments, however sweet ; but to save him, to res- 
cue him, to win him to his true self for himself 
and Cecilie. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


207 


And rising from vain tossing on my bed, 
once more that night I took in spirit my mother’s 
hand, and promised to do her bidding. 

And another Hand held mine. 

And, so, the next morning I rose early and 
prayed for Owen as if he had been in a magi- 
cian’s cave, as he was. There was nothing else 
to be done. 

And the next day a company of guests ar- 
rived, fresh from the battle of La Pataye, the 
first in which our England was defeated in the 
open field. And the Lady Blanche gleamed 
forth in all her charm and graciousness, shining 
equally on all. And for the moment the magi- 
cian’s cave was open to the daylight, and that 
evening Owen read those few precious lines of 
Cecilie’s, which I never saw, again and again, 
and said, 

“ She is sweet and fresh as an English spring- 
flower — violet, primrose, hyacinth. When shall 
we breathe the dear familiar wholesome air 
again ? ” 

These new guests were the three young 
Seigneurs de Mailly from the Dauphin’s court 
at Chinon, — and they had much to say about 
the Maid. 

Of these three young seigneurs two were bro- 
thers and the third was a cousin. They varied 
in their estimate of the Maid. 


208 


yOAN THE MAID. 


Sir Bertrand, the eldest, was a languid and 
polished courtier, well acquainted with the fa- 
vorite, La Tremouille. 

He saw of Jeanne about as much as the 
Lady Blanche could see, and greatly admired 
her insight and discrimination. He considered 
the Maid to be a half-mad enthusiast, of whom 
it might be expedient, for political reasons, to 
make use, because the common people believed 
in her, and would fight for her. But the less 
she could be listened to the better, and so much 
the sooner she could be thrown aside when the 
work was done. Beside her, there was no re- 
pose to be had. A victory, with her, meant not 
a resting-place for feasting and congratulations, 
but a step towards further battle and conquest ; 
and if life were to be one series of enterprises 
and sacrifices, conquest and life itself, he deemed 
were scarce worth having at the price. 

The second brother was an active and able 
captain, and he asserted that whatever might be 
the source of her wisdom, the Maid had a mar- 
vellous capacity for war — seizing the enemy’s 
weak points, seeing at once the best routes 
to take, and the right moments for action or 
repose, with an insight which made her advice 
at the counsel as efficacious as her presence in 
the field ; quick-sighted and keen-witted, with a 
calm courage and self-possession never disturbed, 


PERCIVAVS STOR K. 


209 


The third seigneur was a simple and loyal 
young soldier, whose face lighted up whenever 
he spoke of the Maid. The general chill and 
carping criticism about her kept him usually 
silent ; but one day I found the child Beatrice 
questioning him, with her searching eyes drink- 
ing in his words, and his eyes kindling and his 
voice deepening while he told her all he knew of 
Jeanne. 

Like the young Seigneur Gui de Laval, in 
writing to his mother, he said it was “ heavenly 
to be near her — so simple, so pious, so noble 
and gracious was she.” “ Her festivity was to go 
to church ; and she made the camp as sacred as 
a church to some of us,” he said, turning to me. 
“ To fight under her banner was like fighting be* 
side my own mother, and that means something 
in a camp. It meant the difference between 
heaven and hell to me. Her goodness was not 
a bondage ; she made us feel it freedom. She 
could be as playful as a good child. She would 
not suffer an oath in her hearing, but she per- 
mitted the veteran La Aire, to soften the break- 
ing of his inveterate habit, by swearing “ by his 
baton.” 

From him I first began fully to understand 
what a ceaseless conflict her life was, and how 
tangled and thorny were the ways to her, which 
from outside looked like a triumphal procession. 


210 yOAN THE MAID. 

The first stage in her journey into the wilder, 
ness, the journey from Vaucouleurs to Chinon. 
By the end of the eleven days which this oc- 
cupied, the six men-at-arms who escorted her 
had ceased to have any doubts as to her mis-r 
sion. Their w^ay lay through a hostile country ; 
she had no fear, and her only trouble was that it 
was not considered safe for her to attend mass 
daily in the churches. 

At the end of those eleven days she arrived 
outside Chinon, and then began her ceaseless 
warfare with the selfishness and sloth which 
were the real ruin of France; the ceaseless hos- 
tility, which though put down again and again 
was never overcome, the jealousy and hatred of 
the worthless favorite La Tremouille, the cold- 
hearted Archbishop of Rheims, and all who 
loved their own ease, or their success at court 
more than their country or duty. 

The conflict began with their endeavoring to 
prevent her seeing the king. It ended by their 
preventing his lifting a finger to save her from 
the death of fire. 

Their first point was to hinder her entering 
the castle. 

But the city of Orleans, which in its sore dis- 
tress had heard of the succor promised through 
her, sent a deputation to entreat the king to 
listen. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


2II 


And her two first knightly friends, Jean de 
Metz and Bertrand de Boulangy, who had es- 
corted her from Vaucouleurs, bore such witness 
to her that this objection was overcome. 

At her first interview, King Charles, to test 
her, pretended he was not the king. But she 
was not to be misled. 

Gradually the faith in her spread and deep- 
ened. 

The monks who had been sent to enquire 
into her life at Domremy came back with a fa- 
vorable report. Nothing but good was to be 
heard of her in her native valley. 

Grave theologians questioned her, and great 
ladies came to see her. She met every one with 
the dignity and ease, the gayety and sweetness 
natural to her. But in secret she wept and 
prayed much. 

One thing at last greatly moved the king. 
He had doubts about his own birth and his 
right to the kingdom. These he had breathed 
to no one, but had laid especially in one solemn 
secret prayer before God. 

This secret doubt and silent prayer the 
Maid met and answered by saying to him one 
day with an authority she never otherwise used 
in speaking to him, having the profoundest rev- 
erence for royalty. This once she used the un- 
wonted “ thou’' to her sovereign. “ Je te dis," 


212 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


she said, de la part de Messire” — I say to 
thee from my King, thou art the true heir of 
France and son of the king.” 

This was her secret sign to the king, as re- 
vealed afterwards, though never to be wrung 
from her by months of torturing cross-question- 
ing. 

After this he consented to her being subject- 
ed for three weeks to a sifting examination by 
various bishops and divines at Poitiers. 

She told them of her visions and her voices ; 
how they commanded her to go and help 
France, and in spite of her tears she had to obey 
and had come. 

‘^Jeanne,” said Guilleaume Aymeri, at this 
examination, ** you ask for men-at-arms, but if 
God wills that the English depart there is no 
need for men-at-arms, since the will of God alone 
can discomfit them.” 

“ In the name of God,” she said, “ the men- 
at-arms will do battle, and God will give the 
victory. 

Then Seguin, a Dominican friar, who spoke 
the Limousin patois, “ a very sour man,” wanted 
her to tell what language her voices spoke. 

“ Better than yours,” she replied. 

He was aggrieved at this attack upon his 
language, and in retaliation, questioned her 
faith. 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


213 


“ Do you believe in God ? ” he asked. 

“ More than you do,” she said. 

Then he retorted that he would give her no 
soldiers until she gave some sign of her mission. 

In the name of God,” she replied, “ I am 
not come to Poitiers to give a sign. But take 
me to Orleans and I will show you the signs 
wherefore I was sent.” 

“ There is more in the books of our Lord 
than in your books,” she said. 

The nobleness of S^guin triumphed over his 
temper, and he himself reported this against 
himself. 

The examination at Poitiers lasted three 
weeks, and all the time her conduct was continu- 
ally watched. 

The result was that the divines pronounced 
decidedly for her ; the captains marvelled at her 
aptitude for war ; the good Queen Yolande, and 
all noble matrons and maidens who learned to 
know her, delighted in her simplicity, modesty, 
and goodness; and the people declared she was 
a messenger of God, many who went to see her, 
doubtful and suspicious, leaving her with tears 
of homage and sympathy. 

The young Duke d’Alengon, a prince of the 
blood, was so won by her simplicity and dignity, 
that seeing the grace and ease with which she rode 
beside the king he presented her with a charger. 


214 


yOA.V THE MAID, 


And all the time she continued simple as 
ever” as at Domr^my, and “ speaking little.” 

And so at last the king gave her a “ house- 
hold/’ an army was raised, and she was sent to 
Orleans, there to raise the siege and so to show 
the sign she was sent to give. Which I had seen. 

“ She will not have her reward on earth,” 
the young Seigneur de Lailly said. “Our coin 
is not hers. Gifts and splendors are nothing to 
her. She lavishes them on the poor. She 
moves easily and royally amid the nobles and 
knights and ladies, gracious and considerate and 
unencumbered as a born princess. Which in- 
deed she is. Pure and free with the glow and 
purity of self-sacrificing love. Those who are 
near her are made pure not by the presence of 
ice, but by the glow of fire.” 

The Maid had not lingered a day in Orleans 
after the raising of the siege. 

Gloriously simple all questions of sowing and 
reaping, of rewards and punishments become to 
a life such as hers, which is simply love. 

There can be no reaping for love, but the 
harvest of good to the beloved. There are no 
rewards to love but the success and the progress 
of its work. Included in' these is of course the 
love of the beloved ; but th's in endlessly gradu- 
ated measure, according to the capacity and. 
capability of the being loved. 


PEJ^aVArS STORY, 


215 


From God, infinite love for our finite. 

From equal beings equal ceaseless vibration 
of equal love. 

From the child to the mother an occasional 
responsive smile for a heaven of sunshine, until 
the child, by being cared for and brooded over, 
itself grows through such care and brooding, 
fervor and frost of love, to its full stature and 
equality of being and of love. 

It was reward to Jeanne that Orleans was 
saved, that the people were free and happy ; 
and, as far as it showed this, their enthusiastic 
gatherings around her were reward. It was 
reward to her warm heart that grateful hearts 
should love her, and that, loving, they should 
delight to give. 

But the clamor of praise and admiration, the 
robes of silk and velvet trimmed with richest 
furs,” were no reward. Mon»ey was of use be- 
cause of the poor; but money gained by pillage, 
stolen bread, she would not touch even when 
there was no other. 

It was not that she painfully denied herself 
luxuries and human praise. In the coinage of 
the kingdom where she dwelt they were simply 
valueless. 

On Sunday morning, the 8th of May, the 
English army retreated from Orleans. On 
Monday the Maid left for the court of Charles. 


2I6 yOAN THE MAID. 

There all the forces of inertness gathered 
against her. 

To her first week of combat and victory 
succeeded a weary month of conflict against 
sloth and envy and intrigue. 

The raising of the siege of Orleans had its 
advantages even for the most slothful. It spared 
them the necessity of further flight. 

But Jeanne’s next enterprise, the crowning 
of Charles at Rheims, involved vigorous advance, 
a perilous journey of many leagues, the recapture 
of many cities, and against this La Tr^mouille 
and the courtiers set themselves with all the 
blind heavy force of indolent human souls that 
were dragging themselves down to the level of 
dead matter. 

She entreated for soldiers, for permission 
only to go forth with those who were eager to 
fight. 

Before the raising of the siege of Orleans the 
king’s treasurer had told him that the royal 
finances were reduced to four crowns. But 
Jeanne demanded no money, no fresh soldiers, 
only to be allowed to use the forces eager to be 
employed. She implored for work. And the 
king gave her magnificent dinners, a household 
with squires and grooms, a royal embrace, and 
the right to carry on her shield the lilies of 
France. 


PE/^C/VAL'S STOPY. 


217 


A weary month she waited, chafing at the 
delay, while they held councils, and lamented 
their poverty and the strength of the English 
and Burgundians. 

She moaned and secretly wept over these 
ignoble hesitations; for all the while, from all 
the desolated land, went up the cry of the 
“ great pity” which had moved the angels, the 
moan of the helpless and the starving. And, 
moreover, she was pressed on by the conviction 
that her time was short. She said she herself 
should not last more than a year — “ ne durerait 
guere plus d’unan” — and that they should make 
the best use of this year, for she had much yet 
to do. 

Dunois remained true to her, and the Duke 
d’Alengon, and all loyal soldiers and patriots 
whether veteran captains or young knights. And 
the divines, such as the great Gerson, followed 
her with sanction and benediction. 

But the Chancellor of the kingdom, the Arch- 
bishop of Rheims, could not endure her rapid 
action ; and the courtiers could not endure any 
action at all ; the world and the flesh were 
against her ; and still the court would not 
move. 

At length, one day, Dunois took her to the 
chamber where the king was holding private 
conference with Christopher d’Harcourt, Bishop 
10 


2i8 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


of Castres, his confessor, and the former chan< 
cellor of the kingdom, Robert le Macon. 

She knocked at the door, and when she was 
admitted, she threw herself at the feet of the 
king, and clasping his knees, she said, 

Gentle Dauphin, hold no more such long 
councils. But come as soon as possible to 
Rheims to receive the crown which is your 
right.” 

Christopher d’Harcourt asked if her voices 
had told her that. 

“Yes,” she said, “I am sorely pricked to 
the heart touching this thing.” 

“ Would you not,” said D’Harcourt, “ tell us 
here, before the king, how your voices speak to 

•i >> 

you r 

“I understand,” she said blushing, “what 
you would ask, and I will tell you willingly.” 

The king, seeing her much moved, courte- 
ously asked if she really wished to explain her- 
self with others present. 

She said she was quite willing. And then 
she told how when she was harassed with the 
doubts which people opposed to her mission, 
she went apart and prayed to God, moaning that 
men would not believe her ; and when her pray- 
er was finished, she heard a voice which said to 
her, ‘‘ Fille De, va, va, va! Je serai a ton aide, 
va ! — “ Daughter of God ! go, go, go ! I will be 


PER Cl VATS STORY. 


219 


thy help, go !” And when this voice came she 
was “ greatly rejoiced, and would have gladly 
continued in that state for ever.” 

And as she repeated these words of the 
voice, her face beamed with joy, and she raised 
her eyes to heaven. 

Her words moved the king, and at length 
they sent her forth, on the 9th of June, with a 
small army. 

Then followed her second marvellous week 
of battle and victory. 

On that week of victory it is hard for me 
even now to dwell ; on the courage of my peo- 
ple, and the skill of our commanders, all dashed 
in vain against the power of the peasant-girl, 
sent, as she believed, of God. 

It was not easy to an Englishman, even with 
French blood in his veins and his mother’s 
French accents lingering in his heart, to hear of 
scores of English archers vainly slain, of Talbot 
and Suffolk, and our noblest captains taken cap- 
tive or killed. 

Only, everywhere that one simple, noble 
figure raises the conflict from the wars of nations 
into the field of the great ceaseless conflict be- 
tween right and wrong. 

Good at any cost was it, as I deem, for our 
England and for us, that she was turned back 
from the hundred years of war and ravage in 


220 


yOAN THE MAID. 


the land which was not, and never could be ours, 
and could only learn to hate us more the longer 
we stayed. 

“ If she was not sure,” Jeanne said, “ that 
God was leading her, she would far rather keep 
her sheep than risk all these perils.” 

Once more, before the town of Jargeau, she 
appeared in what to her meant an embassage of 
peace and of mercy. 

She summoned the garrison to depart, un- 
harmed in life or limb to their “ little coast” (en 
leur petite cotte). 

No attack until all attempts at reconciliation 
had failed ; but then no delay. 

The next day was Sunday. 

At nine o’clock she caused the trumpets to 
sound for the assault. 

“ It was too soon,” said the Duke d’Alengon, 
who shared the command. 

“ Doubt not,” she replied. “ The right hour 
is, when it pleases God. We must use the oc- 
casion which God gives. Work and God will 
work.” And she added: “Ah, gentle duke, 
are you afraid? Don’t you know I have pro- 
mised your wife to bring you back safe and 
jjound ?” 

And in that very assault she kept her word. 

He was watching the attack from what was 
jupposed to be a sheltered place beside her, 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


221 


when, with that marvellous clearness of sight 
v/hich proceeded from entire fearlessness for her- 
self, she perceived a danger threatening him. 

“ Draw back, for there is an engine which 
will kill you !” she said ; and she showed him a 
cannon on the walls. 

He retired, and a moment afterwards, a 
gentleman who took his place was killed. 

Girl of seventeen, protectress of cities and 
captains ! yet herself bearing, as she well knew, 
no charmed life. For at that very town, as she 
climbed the scaling-ladder with the banner in 
her hand, a stone broke against her casque and 
she fell. But rising again instantly she cried ; 

“Up! up! Our King has condemned the 
English. At this hour they are ours.” 

And inspired by her confidence and courage 
her people scaled the walls and took the city. 

This was on the nth of June. 

On the 15th she took the Bridge of Meuse, 
on the 17th the town of Beaugency. On the 
1 8th she won the battle of Pataye, the first Eng- 
land had lost since Crdcy. On the 19th she re- 
turned to Orleans. 

One more joyous Sunday for the Maid in 
her Orleans. One more day of joy and triumph 
in the rescued city; of thanksgivings in the 
churches, and processions of enraptured crowds 
in the streets. 


222 


THE MAID. 


For now, not only Orleans, but the whole 
land of the Loire was free. 

And yet, for her, on this second- week of 
victory, followed another month of conflict 
with the real foes of the Maid and the kingdom. 

Even in the hour of triumph there was a 
base victory gained by the powers of sloth in 
that secret strife which never ceased. 

The city of Orleans had lavished large sums 
in decorating the houses and streets to welcome 
the king. No one doubted that he would come 
to share the joy of this liberated city. 

But La Tr^mouille and the courtiers dared 
not trust him to the sunshine and fresh air of a 
people’s welcome. 

And while Orleans sang Te Deums and was 
glad, her king kept apart, taking indolent pleas- 
ure in a castle of La Tremouille’s near at hand. 

Orleans was delivered ; the Loire was won 
back. The next step was the consecration and 
coronation. The winning back not of the king- 
dom to the king, but of the king to the kingdom 
and to true royalty. 

Against this La Tremouille and all who ruled 
the king by what was lowest in him, steadfastly 
plotted. They had prevented him from giving 
himself to the loyal welcomes of Orleans. To 
Jeanne’s great grief they rejected the aid of the 
Constable de Richemont ; and declined, or 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


223 


wjvjteJ in every possible way, the succors of men 
and treasure which now came pouring in on all 
sides from a country once more inspired with 
hope and belief in itself. They made subtle pre- 
texts of petty attacks on small places still in Eng* 
lish hands ; they made sounding boasts of mag- 
nificent expeditions against the core of the Eng- 
lish occupation . at Rouen. Anything to hinder 
the real work of reconquering the kingdom and 
liberating the king! 

When for a few moments the king himself had 
an interview with the Maid, he was moved by her 
passion of patriotism and loyalty. She wept, and 
he entreated her to spare herself and take repose. 

But her repose consisted in doing her work, 
“ pricked to the heart,” until it was accomplish- 
ed. And she, in return, entreated him not to 
despair or doubt, but let himself be crowned. 

Until at length, afraid of being herself car 
ried off from her true path into some of these 
fatal by-paths, she left the town of Gien where 
the court was sojourning, and insisted on camp- 
ing in the open field. 

Without her they could do nothing, though 
with her they endeavored to do nothing And 
at length the reluctant court yielded and con- 
sented to be swept on to victory. 

On the 29th of June the journey to Rheims 
was begun. 


224 


YOAJV THE MAID. 


But of all those weary days of secret conflict 
and that week of victory one picture remains 
most vividly on my heart. 

It was at La Pataye. 

The battle was over, and some French sol- 
diers were handling roughly an English prisoner. 
The Maid saw it too late to save him. They 
had wounded the captive Englishman to death. 

She sprang from her horse. She rebuked 
the cruel deed, so common that no one thought 
of such wrongs but as the common accidents of 
war. 

She held the poor bruised head, and sustain- 
ed the dying man as a sister to the last, sending 
for a priest to absolve him. 

It is thus that, as a ministering angel of 
mercy, she oftenest shines on my heart. 


CHAPTER XII. 


percival’s story. 

I T was on the royal journey to Rheims that 
the three young Seigneurs de Mailly had 
turned aside to pay a visit to their kinsman 
and kinswoman in the chateau where we were 
imprisoned. 

And while this great conflict was going on in 
the large world outside, a combat was waging 
also in the little world where my shepherding 
lay ; and in this also I could only look on and 
wait. 

From the first appearance of Bertrand de 
Mailly, Owen had evidently felt him an antag- 
onist. 

Beween him and the Lady Blanche there 
was an obvious harmony, as of two instruments 
that are not only attuned together, but have 
been wont to be played in concert. 

I say instruments, not voices, because the 
whole harmony seemed to me artificial, as of 
skilfully constructed strings, not of human 
souls. 

On one point Owen’s disgust with the super- 


226 


yOAN THE MAID. 

cilious stranger brought him into more harmony 
with me. 

“ It is clear enough why we English should 
distrust the Maid,” he said; “but to use her, 
to take shelter under her courage (for courage- 
ous the witch is) like a set of frightened chickens 
under a hen, and then to peck and carp at her, 
that seems to me the basest of treachery. If the 
Almighty had but sent England such a succor, 
instead of letting the devil send it to these lazy 
Frenchmen !” 

I hoped that the counter-poison was working 
in my brother. 

The cynical ignoble worldliness of Bertrand 
was rousing him to see what a hideous thing 
this selfish worldliness was. 

“Some Frenchmen do recognize and honor 
her,” I said. “ Dunois, the young Duke d’Alen- 
^on, all the bravest captains, all true women, 
the common people everywhere, all who have 
eyes single enough to see. Here, even, the 
young Seigneur de Mailly, and old Sir Tanne- 

guy-" 

“The Lady Blanche is an Italian,” he said, 
as if apologizing for her. “ She is bound to the 
Maid by no ties of patriotism and gratitude.” 

There are those at home,” I replied, “who 
would not have needed to be born French- 
women to see what the Maid is.” 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


227 


He was silent. 

The spell was by no means broken yet. 

In a day or two the young seigneurs rejoined 
their king, and the charm of the lady’s keen 
wit and the easy graciousness, always occupied 
with the present as if there were no past, and 
no absent, enfolded Owen once more. 

“ She says she has told Sir Bertrand she has 
no patience with their adulation of this peasant, 
and then talking against her. She is quite sorry 
for the poor young girl, when she thinks what 
undeceiving awaits her.” 

“Undeceiving! ”I said. And I thought 
“ there are many spells and many undeceivings.” 

The lady was more gracious than ever now 
to Owen. I believe, simply, from the instinct 
that a subject was being lost. She could not 
resist the necessity of winning him back. 

A sweet gravity came at times into her man- 
ner towards him, just a slight shade of difference 
from her joyous and easy bearing towards Sir 
Bertrand, as if to indicate a greater depth in the 
sentiment. 

She chose graver passages in those perilous 
Italian lessons. She did not so much affect the 
chase and noisy gatherings as quiet rambles. 

And she spoke with a kind of regretful sym- 
pathy of our ransom and return, asked questions 
about our home in England, our amusements, 


228 


yOAN THE MAID 


and occupations there, and insinuated that souls 
seemed somehow sometimes mislaid and born in 
the wrong countries — Owen’s nature was so obvi- 
ously fitted for the wide, intermingled social life 
of the great Italian cities, just as her own was. 
But the transplanting with him seemed to have 
been at birth, with her at marriage. 

She said nothing disparaging of our England, 
but in some way the “petite cotte,” as Jeanne 
called it, grew smaller as she spoke, the life 
duller; a fog and a chill seemed to fall over all. 

I don’t believe she planned to entangle and 
ruin my brother’s life. What could she intend 
to do with it ? 

Simply, he was a subject, straying from his 
allegiance, and had, at all costs, to be won back. 
And to such allegiance as he had given he was 
won back. 

And for me there was nothing but to let the 
spells work, and to trust that when he woke 
from this enchantment, as wake he must, he 
would wake as he had never been awake before. 

Meantime I worked hard at my Latin. The 
child Beatrice and I pursued our rambles among 
the forests and villages near, fuller now than ever 
of the Maid. 

And one day we found little Domr^my in a 
joyous tumult of triumph and rejoicing. 

Some of her old friends had gone the day 


PERCIVAUS STOR Y. 


229 


before to Chalons to see her in her great estate ; 
scarcely expecting to do more than look at her 
from a distance, as at the king or the queen. 

But they found her friendly and simple as 
ever. Several of them spoke to her. To Jean 
Morel she gave a cloak that she had worn. She 
had great delight in seeing them again. 

She was at ease among the nobles, they 
said, as with them, and as cordial with them as 
in the old peasant days. 

To one of them, D’Epinal, she said a word 
which seemed to me to give a key to what a 
true conflict was. She said to him, she feared 
but one things TRAITORS. 

The old devout habits of her childhood, 
those around her told them, were still kept up. 

She delighted in the sound of church-bells 
At twilight she loved to creep silently into the 
churches to pray. 

She was but a servant of all for God’s sake. 

She received gifts from great personages and 
returned them by giving such little presents as 
she could in her turn. But her delight was in 
giving to the poor, and in praying in church, 
especially beside the children, as when she had 
cherished little Mengette, and nursed the little 
boy at Domremy through his sickness. Often, 
her chaplain, Pasquerel, said, she would find 
out the days on which the orphan children of 


230 


yOAN- THE MAID 


the Convent Schools received the Communion, 
and then she would go up among the little ones 
to Him who bid such come to Him, and com- 
municate beside them. 

Princes and great captains liked to talk 
gravely with her, as with a good and wise man ; 
and yet they said that save for her marvellous 
aptitude for war, she was simple as any other 
girl. 

The common people thronged around her 
to touch but the hem of her garment ; they 
threw themselves before her horse’s feet ; they 
kissed her hands and feet ; they brought her 
written Paternosters to touch and bless. She 
smiled and said any good woman’s touch would 
do as much good as hers. But no gentle dis- 
suasion of hers would turn aside the enthusiasm 
of gratitude which surrounded her. They called 
her “the angelic.” To have her hold a child at 
the font and let it be called by her name, was 
an honor dearly prized. They sang songs and 
ballads in her honor; they struck medals with 
her likeness on them and wore them as sacred 
symbols. 

But all the while, undazzled, unbewildered, 
her face was set steadfastly towards the deliver- 
ance of France. The raising of sieges was as 
simply a duty as, in old days, the spinning and 
keeping sheep; and her heart often went back 


PERCIVArS STORY. 


231 


to the dear old life in her father’s house at 
Domremy. 

The father who had so jealously guarded 
her ; the mother who had taught her the Creed 
and Lord’s Prayer ; the cur^ who said “ he had 
never known so beautiful a soul,” and had 
taught her the history of the saints and of 
France ; the bell-ringer to whom she had given 
the little cakes to make him regular in his bell- 
ringing ; the young girls and little children she 
had loved and played with ; it was good to see 
them gathered that July evening in the village 
street before the door of her father’s little grey 
house, listening to those who had seen her yes- 
terday, in her glory, yet unchanged to them, and 
simple and kind as ever. 

There was a joyous excitement about the 
little village. Yet to me, as the little groups 
dispersed to their various homes in the long vil- 
lage street, and up the slopes, it seemed as if 
there were an awe and solemnity among them, 
as of a congregation dispersing from some sa- 
cred service. It was as if they had seen a vision 
of angels, as if they had been recounting the 
deeds not so much of a warrior, but of a saint. 

As the child Beatrice and I went our way 
up the hill to the forest and the castle, and 
looked back on the village, the lights were burn- 
ing in a few of the cottages, marking the lines 


232 


yOAN THE MAID. 


of the streets of the two adjoining villages of 
Greux and Domremy, along the valley and up 
the slopes ; the cattle Jeanne had helped to 
watch were in the pastures by the river, the 
river was winding like a golden cord in the sun- 
set. We passed the little chapel of Notre 
Dame de Bourlaimont, where she had so often 
prayed ; above us the wind was rustling the 
leaves of the old oaks of the Bois Chesnu. Our 
path lay by the ancient well which was said to 
have healing powers, and under the great beech- 
tree, the ladies’ or fairies’ tree, “ fair as a lily,” 
one of the villagers said, where Jeanne used to 
play and weave garlands, or to creep apart from 
her companions to pray as “before the very 
presence of God.” 

And now she was with the army, summon- 
ing cities to surrender, saving our England, in 
spite of herself, for her true work, saving France 
and her indolent court just as much in spite of 
themselves ; outwardly and apparently on a tri- 
umphal march, but really bearing the Cross 
in the long procession of the disciples who had 
followed the crucified Master in the conflict with 
sloth and treachery and selfishness. 

And, more than ever, the whole region 
seemed' to me as a Holy Land. 

Two days after that day, when the peasants 
of Domremy saw Jeanne at Chalons, Sir Tanne- 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


233 


guy and the Lady Blanche began to prepare for 
the journey to Rheims. 

The Seigneur Bertrand de Mailly was com- 
ing to escort them. 

“ It seems after all probable that this Dom- 
remy peasant-girl will have her way and get 
the king crowned,” the Lady Blanche said. 
‘‘ No doubt it has been written among the stars 
for ages. And when the time comes, the hand 
of a child may copy that writing into history.” 

She was all day among her maids arranging 
her jewels and dresses. “ It made her feel like 
a child again,” she said, “among the splendors 
of the beautiful streets of the Italian cities.” 

No arrangements were made for taking the 
child Beatrice. 

“You three will be quite happy together for 
the few days we are away,” she said the evening 
before the departure. 

But that evening, as I was returning from 
my hotel with the Cure of Domr^my, I saw the 
child’s face watching at the window of the keep 
which commanded the valley ; and when I 
reached the castle gate she was there, and 
stretching out her hands she said, with a sob in 
her voice, 

“ Take me to Rheims! I must see theMaid !” 

“Your mother will take you,” I said, “if she 
thinks you wish it. 


234 


JOAN THE MAID. 


‘^Ask for me!” said she, and whether I 
would or not, she drew me to the hall where her 
mother stood in the robes of state she was to 
wear at the coronation. 

I suppose she saw something grave in my 
face, for she dismissed her attendants, and seat- 
ed herself expectantly on a large chair in a win- 
dow. The child knelt before her, and clasped 
her hands and kissed them passionately. 

“ Mother mine,” she said. “ Take me, I 
must, I must be there ! ” 

A cloud came over the Lady Blanche’s face. 

“ Such ceremonials are not for babes,” she 
said. “What has come to thee? Thy book 
and thy church and thy dreams are more to thee 
than all these magnificences. The king is, after 
all, not so very unlike any other seigneur. I 
will act it all for thee when we come back.” 

“It is not the King, it is the Maid I want to 
seel” the child said, breaking through her re- 
serve, in her eagerness. “ The Maid who knows 
our Lord as her own King, Messire; whom all 
the peasant children of Domr^my love, who has 
saved France, and lets little children kiss her 
hands. I want to hear her voice, and kiss her 
hands. Mother, let me go 1 ” 

“ A daughter of our house kiss the hands of 
a shepherdess of our own valleys!” exclaimed 
the lady haughtily. “ We cannot have another 


PERCIVAVS STOa i . 


235 


ecstatic maid from the Vosges! Stay at home, 
and learn thy lute and thy book; — or spin, as 
thy Jeanne did ; that is the way to grow like her 
if such is thy desire.” ; 

But in the twilight old Sir Tanneguy had 
entered unperceived, and he interposed and 
said, 

“ Fair daughter, surely the little one may 
go I She will be the fairest jewel in thy array.” 

But the lady was not so easily moved, 

“ I have none else to rule or to call my own,” 
she said petulantly. “ Let me at least rule my 
own child.” 

The child rose and stood with folded hands. 

“ I tvill be like La Pucelle,” she said. “ I 
will be obedient and good and stay at home, if 
my mother wills.” 

But there were tears in her voice, and there 
was a patient womanly submission in the child- 
ish face and attitude which stirred the old man 
more than words. 

“By my baton, fair lady,”, he said, “since the 
Maid permits us no stronger oath, the little one 
shall go. It is well that she should remember 
the day, and tell our great-grand-children of it.” 

As, he spoke Bertrand de Mailly arrived, 
fresh from a sharp ride to join the lady’s escort 
to Rheims, and Sir Tanneguy referred the case 
to him. 


236 


JOAN THE MAID, 


I will guard the little lady as my own sister, 
or dearer/' he said, “ if I am permitted. And 
at Rheims, my young cousin Raymond will de- 
light to conduct her. He adores the Pucelle.” 

The Lady Blanche was too queenly to yield 
ungraciously. She embraced the little one ten- 
derly, and said, 

“ It is a joy the more ! But who would have 
dreamt such ambition and gayety were hidden 
in thee ? ” 

And so the next morning the brilliant cav- 
alcade left the castle gates, and wound away by 
the winding road on the banks of the river. 

“I shall see our Pucelle!” said the child to 
me softly, that morning. Perhaps I shall kiss 
the hands that held the dying Englishman. 
And then I will come back and tell you.” 

And so Owen and I were left behind in the 
deserted castle. 

Through all these preparations and leave-tak- 
ings he had kept out of sight. 

When I went to our chamber, daintily fur- 
nished, with wide open windows, I found him 
with his head resting on his hand reading a man- 
uscript I had borrowed a few days before from 
the Cure of Domremy. 

It was called La Consolacion, or the 
tion of Christy and was stirring the hearts of 
men and women far and wide. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


23 


No one knew exactly by whom it was wrh 
ten. Some said by the great theologian Gerso.., 
who, after the seige of Orleans, exhorted France 
to trust the Maid, almost with his dying lips, — 
for he died a sorrowful, disappointed man, not 
three months after the siege was raised ; some 
by a monk, Thomas k Kempis. But whoever 
uttered the words, those words uttered the cr^ 
of the age. 

“ This is a very remarkable book,’’ said 
Owen. “ It is written by a man who knows the 
hearts of men, and the deceitful emptiness of the 
world.” 

I did not quite know how to reply. Books 
of piety not being usually Owen’s delight, I 
feared by too much praise of any to turn him 
from them, and, moreover, I had not found the 
world empty, and I had found the hearts of men 
return good measure, pressed close, and running 
over, for any poor love of mine. 

“ The world as far as it is worldly,” I sug- 
gested. 

But at that moment I caught sight of the 
cavalcade winding round the last turn at the 
foot of the castle steep. The dear child’s face 
was turned wistfully back to our window, and I 
waved her a farewell. 

“ I thought you had little care for all these 
splendors,” he said. 


238 


yOAN THE MAID. 


** I was answering the child Beatrice,” I said. 

“Yes, all are alike!” he said. “ Even that 
child who seemed so fond of you, and to like to 
stay and cheer you. Even with her, before this 
empty pageant and show, all else sinks to noth- 
ing.” 

“ It is not the show the child loves,” I said, 
“ It is the reality. It is the Maid, she believes 
to be sent from God.” 

“You believe that of the child ! ” he replied 
with immeasurable scorn at my credulity. “You 
don’t see that they all do w/iaif they like^ no 
doubt from some angelic and patriotic motive ; 
but always, after all, only just what they like. If 
you will not see the world aj it is, how are you 
to preach to it ? ” 

And he continued reading. 

“Truly it is a misery to live upon the earth.* 

“ Miserable men 1 yet a while, and they will 
feel bitterly what a worthless thing, and even 
nothing, it was that they have loved so much.” 

“We must not put any great confidence in 
frail and mortal man, useful and beloved though 
he be. Nor should we be much grieved if he 
sometimes oppose and contradict us.” 

“ They that to-day are with thee, to-morrow 
may be against thee ; and men often change to 
the contrary side like the wind.*’ 

“Thou errest, thou errest if thou seekest 


PERCIVArS STORY. 


239 


ought else than to suffer tribulation ; for this 
whole mortal life is full of miseries, and every- 
where marked with crosses.” 

“That man understood the world,” Owen 
commented, with a profound sigh. did not 

live in a fool’s paradise. This book is worth 
your reading, brother.’’ 

“ I have read it much,” I said. 

But I hardly liked to say with what thought 
it had most deeply impressed me. 

It had struck me as ‘wonderful that our 
Lord should, at the same moment, as it were, 
have given to His Church a Book and a Life, 
which so corresponded to Him and to each 
other, an “ Imitation of Christ” in words and in 
life. 

For there were passages in that book which 
seemed as if they had been given as the image 
of this Maid of Domremy. 

I said nothirfg, but read some of these pas- 
sages to him. 

“ By two ways is man lifted above earthly 
things ; namely, by purity and simplicity. 

“ If thou aim at, and seek after nothing else 
but the will of God and thy neighbor’s benefit, 
then thou shalt enjoy interior liberty. 

“ If only thy heart were right, then every 
created thing would be to thee a mirror of life, 
and a book of holy teaching.” 


240 yOAN THE MAID. 

And almost unconsciously I repeated her 
words. 

My king has other books than those ye clerks 
wot of I' 

Messire a un livre ou nul clerc n’a jamais 
lu, si parfait qu’il soit en clericature.” 

And again I read. 

“ Stand without any choice or self-seeking, 
and thou shalt always win." 

“ Love flieth, runneth, and rejoiceth ; is free 
and cannot be restrained, giveth all for all, hath 
all in all." 

“ Love often knoweth no measure." 

“ Love feeleth no burden, thinketh noth 
ing of labors, would willingly do more than 
it can, complaineth not of impossibility, be- 
cause it deemeth that it may or can do all 
things." 

It can achieve anything. 

Again the Maid’s words recurred to me ' 
The great pity for Frayice “ Make use of 
me, for I have only a year. I am pricked to the 
heart, until my work is doueP 

“Yes, yes,” said Owen, a little impatiently, 
“the writer is speaking of the Lord Christ, no 
doubt, or of some very great saints, such as 
there were in olden time. We do not expect to 
see such things now." 

“We often cannot see, what we will not ex- 


PERCIVATS STORY. 


241 


pect,” I said^ “ Yet thou and I have seen lovely 
things, even at home.” 

‘‘At home, yes,” he said, ‘‘the mother, of 
course, never thought of herself. But that is 
quite natural for mothers. And as to thee, old 
man,” he added with a smile, laying his hand on 
my shoulder, ‘‘ there is not over-much self-seek- 
ing in thee. But to thee also it is a kind of na- 
ture to care for other people. I do not deny that. 
But what I want thee to attend to is the pene- 
tration with which this book speaks of the empti- 
ness of the world. It is very remarkable. I 
have been learning it lately.” 

As he spoke the joyous sounds of music and 
laughter came up from the departing caval- 
cade. 

‘‘What do they care,” he said, ‘‘with all 
their gracious smiles and words, for us living 
here in captivity ?” 

‘‘ We need not pine here long,” I said ; 
” Peter has not forgotten us, nor the dear ones 
at home. They and their love, at all events, 
are not vanity and emptiness, nor do they change 
‘ like the wind. 

A crimson flush came over his face. 

For a time he said nothing, then he mur- 
mured half-regretfully, half-angrily, 

‘‘ Poor, pleasant little valley of Danescombe, 
anything is an excitement and a variety there." 


242 


:}fOAN THE MAID. 


I did not look at him. I felt sure he was 
chafing inwardly against a prick of self-reproach. 

And after a time he resumed. 

Votre petite cotte^ this insolent Maid called 
England. ‘ Go back,’ said she, ‘ to your petite 
cotte.’ Compared with this wide world it is a 
little fold— to be penned up in. Not only on 
account of its size in itself. But here, in this 
France, one feels open to all the world beyond 
— Italy, the Empire, Rome, Constantinople, the 
East, Jerusalem; one feels a member of the 
wide world, of one great Christendom.” 

“Yes,” I said, “for England to conquer 
France means, I think, for England to become a 
little detached province of France, and our 
nobles but squires and pages in great French 
houses. What if God intends something more 
than that for our England? What if He sent 
the Maid to send us back to make our petite 
cotte something greater than we know of yet? ” 

He looked thoughtful. 

“ There is something in being among one’s 
own,” he said after a time, “in having work to 
arrange, and men to rule.” 

“ There is something too in being loved,” I 
ventured to add. 

Again he flushed. 

It seemed to me that something deeper than 
had yet been awakened in him was stirring. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


243 


He had been so accustomed to please, so 
unused to having any shadow of doubt or fear 
as to the love felt for him, that the thought of 
such love as Cecilie’s as a rare and priceless 
treasure, in contrast with the flatteries and en- 
chantments which had lately been around him, 
was new to him. 

We need to see the meteors sometimes, 
flashing and vanishing, in order to comprehend 
the steadfastness of the stars. 

Owen accompanied me on my rambles 
through field and forest. He came with me to 
the humble little house of the cur^ in the vil- 
lage. 

The good man was in great excitement that 
day. It seemed, at last, that the coronation at 
Rheims was close at hand ; and he had made up 
his mind to go with some of his parishioners to 
see the triumph of the King and the Maid. 

His face beamed, — as was the case with so 
many in the village, and every where, who had 
really known her, — when he spoke of her; so 
“simple and gentle and pleasant,” he said, 
“praying so fervently, saying so little, and doing 
so much for all, because she loved so much, — be- 
cause she loved so much and had no thought of 
herself. When she had only her one little bed 
tc give, she gave that to destitute fugitives, and 
sate up in the chimney corner. And now that 


244 


THE MAID, 


she lias rich robes, and horses and jewels, it is the 
same. For she is the same. Rich as a queen, 
when she was a poor peasant girl because of the 
love ; free as a child among all the princes, be- 
cause everywhere her delight is to serve.” “ Fille 
De, Fille de Dieu, daughter of God, all things 
were under her!' as this new book of the Imita- 
tion said, “ not she under them. He had never 
known so beautiful a soul.” 

Owen was silent as we walked back to the 
castle. 

“ This girl may be deluded, but she cannot 
be wicked,” he said. “ I will not call her evil 
names again.” 

Owen was very gentle and peaceful and un- 
usually silent that evening, and I felt sure he 
was pondering many things in his heart. 

And we read together that wonderful new 
book of the “ Imitation.” 

“It is curious,” he said one day, “but that 
poor priest’s words about the Maid keep recur- 
ring tc me.” 

We had been reading the words, 

“ Aim in every external occupation to be in- 
wardly free, and master of thyself, that all things 
be under thee, and not thou under them, that 
thou mayest be lord and ruler of thy actions, and 
not a slave and mercenary, but a freeman trans- 
ferred to the lot and liberty of the sons of God.” 


PEJUC/FATS STORY, 


245 


“Give all; seek nothing; and thou shalt be 
free in heart, and the darkness shall not weigh 
thee down.” 

“ I am a very long way from that,” he said, 
“ but that peasant girl seems not so far off. I 
did not think the saints could be so near us.” 

“ Perhaps, if our eyes are open, we may see 
more of them yet,” I said. 

“ If it is love that makes saints,” he said, 
with a brief smile. “ But it must begin and 
end, the book says, with the love of God. And 
God only, I suppose, can judge as to that.” 

“True,” I said, “we see in the saints the 
love of others, of children, of friends, of the 
poor, of France, of England, of all. And then 
one day the veil is lifted, and we see what our 
Lord must have been seeing all the time, — the 
hidden source in the love of God.” 

He laid his hand on mine. 

“ It is dark to me,” he said. “ How is any 
one to begin ? by loving each other, or by loving 
God ? You see the book says much against the 
bewildering and entangling love of the crea- 
ture. 

“ I scarcely know,” I said. “ Perhaps at 
both ends, and on every side. By loving those 
closest to us, the Holy Law says, ‘ thy neighbor' 
And by loving God with such poor sparks of 
love as we have ; be it but the love of jiunger, 


246 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


like the prodigal, for the bread in the father 3 
house; or the love of gratitude for such daily 
Divine kindnesses as we cannot but see ! ” 

Poor sparks of love, indeed ! ’’ he said. It 
seems to me, sometimes, as if I had never really 
loved at all, never given myself^ only taken, and 
taken ‘ husks or anything ! ’ ” 

If it were so, I thought, he would not be the 
first who had wakened up to the love, only when 
the loveless husks were denied. 

We were sitting at the window looking down 
over the valley as we spoke. 

And as we looked up we both started to out 
feet. 

For toiling up the steep was a well-known 
figure climbing wearily up, and looking even 
more grave and bowed than usual. 

We called his name. 

And in an instant Peter the Wright stood 
erect, as if the load of ten years had been taken 
from him by the familiar voices. 

In a few moments we had met him at the 
castle gate. 

It was Sunday evening, the 19th of July. 

Weary as he was, he would not take food or 
allow himself rest, until he had seen us alone 
and delivered to us the contents of his bags and 
pockets. 

“There!” he said, “the ransom is ready. 


PERCIVAVS Sl'ORY. 


247 


And Mistress Elaine and Mistress Cecilie have 
not a jewel nor a costly robe, nor any little pre- 
cious things left' in the world. And the old 
master has sold his favorite horse, and the little 
palfrey Master Percival trained for Mistress Ce- 
cilie, all are gone.” 

He looked with a mixture of pride and 
grudging in Owen’s face, as he said it. “ Poor 
foolish hearts ! And they think scorn of losing 
everything, just for the hope and joy, master, of 
welcoming thee.” 

Then Owen broke down altogether and hid 
his face in his hands, and said with a broken 
voice, 

“ Oh, Percival, P am not worthy, you know. 
It was r^ot only the world that was empty and 
hollow. It was I.” 

It w vS from Peter the Wright we first heard 
of the consecration. Rumors of the coro- 
nation of the king, at Rheims, had begun to 
reaeh us from many sides, from neighbors and 
villagers of Domr^my and Greux who had gone 
to see the great ceremonial and the triumph of 
the peasant-girl of the village, scarcety yet more 
than a child. 

But the first full account we had of it was 
from Peter the Wright. 

He was not a man to be moved by splendors 
and ceremonials. 


248 


JOAN THE MAID. 


It was rather his way to think scornfully of 
them, as of masks hiding the hollowness within. 

But of this he spoke with an enthusiasm not 
to be repressed. 

He had chanced to lodge on the previous 
night in the same inn with Jeanne D’Arc’s 
father and mother. And he was much moved 
by their simple dignity. 

They were plain peasants still, they lived in 
the old small farm-house at the end of the vil- 
lage. Their family was ennobled, but their own 
mode of living and thinking was unchanged. 

They went forth from the village to see their 
young daughter among princes and warriors, to 
see her far more than crowned ; herself, as every 
true man and woman felt, bestowing the crown. 

And then they went back to their hemp- 
fields and their meadows, to the spinning and 
the weaving, and the household work she had 
shared. 

They asked nothing for themselves, and the 
Maid asked no reward for them ; only for her 
village, that the taxes might be remitted. 

That show,” Peter said, “ was a glimpse into 
the reality of things.” 

It was a triumph, not only of the Maid, but 
of substance over shadow, of truth over show, 
of Divine humility over human pride. 

There were the houses hung with drapery 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


249 


and garlands,’* he said, “ rich tapestries hanging 
from the balconies full of citizens and their wives, 
and nobles and ladies dressed in velvets and 
cloth of gold ; and below, in the streets, the 
grand military procession, trumpets and banners, 
and men-at-arms, and cavaliers on horses gor- 
geously caparisoned, the armor shining, the 
plumes waving ; and at last, within the cathedral, 
bishops and priests and nobles gathered around 
the king as the archbishop poured the holy oil 
on his head at the foot of the altar. 

“ And yet every heart felt that the source 
and centre of all was, not the army, or the 
nobles, or the king himself, but the simple maid- 
en who stood beside him with her white banner 
in her hand, and after>\ards knelt at his feet, and 
with tears said that now “ tke pleasure of God 
wss fulfilled^' 

It was on Sunday the t/th of July* 

11 * 


CHAPTER XIII. 


percival’s story. 


N Sunday the I2th of May, not three 



V_y months before, we had seen her riding 
round the walls of Orleans, under our forts, then 
full of English soldiers who had never known 
defeat, with the citizens crowding around her, 
secure in her mere presence. 

Not six months before, France had not 
known a victory within the memory of man, and 
Jeanne had started with her escort of six from 
Vaucouleurs. 

“At Rheims she was clothed in shining ar- 
mor,” Peter said, “ and looked like an angel. 

“ It was reported,” he added, “ that the arch- 
bishop and the court were, many of them, 
envious of the Maid, and grudged her her due 
share in the triumph. But the people had no 
enmity and no hesitation. All hearts turned to 
her, and she turned to God, as the source of 
all ; and so the hearts of men were lifted up ; 
and to the common people, at all events, that 
coronation-day was a great and sacred solem- 
nity. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


251 


** It was like King David’s ceremonies,” said 
Peter, “ the keeping the sheep, and fighting the 
lion and the giant Goliath, had come before the 
crowning. And that made the crowning as real 
as the shepherding and the fighting.” 

Peter had not found his journey across France 
at all easy. 

“ When I came to France last,” he said, the 
peasants hated and feared us. Now they hate 
us and do not fear us, which does not make 
travelling easier. For, of course, I cannot be 
saying to them what is in my heart, ‘ Poor dear 
souls, I am as glad as you that your Maid has 
hunted us off from our devil’s work of worrying 
and harrying you poor sheep and lambs.’ And 
God knows, I had rather be creeping like a stray 
dog through the wasted land than wasting and 
devouring it like a pack of wolves.” 

Soon after Peter’s arrival tidings began to 
trickle in from the returning peasants, how one 
and another had spoken to the Maid and found 
her simple and kind as ever. 

And there were rumors of the king having 
bidden her take any reward she would, and ol 
her having asked for nothing but that for her 
sake Domremy should be delivered from all 
taxes thenceforth for ever. Which we know, 
later, was really done. 

And next came the rush and tumult of the 


252 


yOAN THE MAID. 


return of the Lady Blanche and the castle caval- 
cade. 

With them came the broken and discordant 
murmurs of the world with which Jeanne’s real 
battle was. 

The Archbishop of Rheims, Chancellor of 
the Kingdom, it was whispered, thought the 
Maid sadly given over to vanity, and the love of 
fine clothes unbefitting her station. 

And both he and La Tremoulle, her persis- 
tent hinderers, were determined that the conse- 
cration being now accomplished, there should 
be no more of this indecorous and bewildering 
haste in driving the king from one enterprise to 
another. 

There were also rumors (unless I mistake 
and this was later) of a shepherd-boy who also 
had revelations, and of another woman who had 
visions. 

In the second stage, visions and revelations 
are not difficult to be had ; and these new “ vis- 
ionaries,” it was said, were far more reasonable 
and tractable than Jeanne, and were content to 
wait on events, and on princes. 

The Lady Blanche said it could not be 
denied the peasant girl had acted her part well. 
The scene in the cathedral was admirably ar- 
ranged, and some said she entreated the king 
now to send her back to her mother and her 


PERCIVAVS S70AY. 


253 


sheep, with as much sincerity, sht tsupposed, as 
there was in the custom for bishops declining to 
be made bishops. 

For to any observant person,” the Lady 
Blanche said, “ it was too clear that the girl was 
far too much at home with the captains or the 
princes, ever to relish spinning peasant gar- 
ments at her father’s little farm any more. She 
had a keen mother-wit, bright penetrating eyes, 
a noble carriage, stately and easy, and it was not 
likely she would choose to exchange her furred 
robes and glittering armor, and her horses ca- 
parisoned like a king’s, for the red woolen peas- 
ant’s dress, and the distaff, and the shepherd’s 
crook.” 

The lady’s view had become even more in 
harmony than ever with the Seigneur Bertrand, 
and it was given out that she was to be 
betrothed to him. 

The child Beatrice was more silent than 
usual. 

But she looked more like one of the angel- 
children in the pictures than ever. 

“ I have seen her and heard her voice,” she 
said to me, “ and now I do not want any more 
pictures of our Lord and the holy Virgin. I 
know they must have looked like that. 

She saw every one, I am sure, she even 
saw me ! Her eyes were on me, and she smiled 


254 


JOAN- THE MAID. 


on me, even on me. And yet all the time I 
knew she was seeing those we cannot see, if only 
she looked up ; I saw that in her eyes. 

“And do not believe about the clothes. Of 
course you never would. She cares no more 
for them than the angels would. The angels 
wore dresses that dazzled people’s eyes, the 
cure says, but it was not because they wanted 
to dazzle people, but because their clothes let 
a little of the glory through. And she is like 
that. 

“And I heard her speak. We were quite 
near. She knelt at the king’s feet and said,’’ 

“‘Gentle king, now is fulfilled the pleasure 
of God, who willed that you should come to 
Rheims to receive your worthy consecration, to 
show that you are the true king, and he to 
whom thy kingdom ought to belong.’ 

“She v/ept, and the lords around her wept 
too ; soldiers and young and old men, they shed 
tears.” 

“You will see her again one day,” I said. 

“I cannot tell,” she said gravely, “ she may 
die, she says she may die any day, and will have 
done her work this year. Or I may die. Little 
children do die as young as I am. 

“ Perhaps I shall see our Lord first, you 
know,” she added, with one of her sudden illum- 
ining smiles. “ And then I shall tell Him how 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


255 


Jeanne helped me to love Him and see what He 
is like.” 

“And perhaps He will tell her one day how 
much you loved her,” I suggested. 

“ Perhaps,” she replied, shaking her head 
doubtfully. “ But the great joy is to know she 
is there ^ and to love her.” 

“ Every one does not love her,” she conclud- 
ed, great tears gathering in the dark eyes. 
“ But I think they will all have to, one day, 
when they find out. And then, oh, how sorry 
they will be.” 

Then suddenly turning the conversation, she 
said, 

“ Do you know I am to be betrothed, like 
my mother, to the young Seigneur Raymond de 
Mailly, cousin of Sir Bertrand. He too loves 
Jeanne. I would rather,” she said very gravely, 
“have married you, and been always with you. 
But you are to be a priest, and so I cannot. 
And it is convenient, they say, on account of 
the land and the peasants. They are mine, and 
Sir Raymond has none of his own, and will take 
care of mine. And, then, you know,” she con- 
cluded, “ I may die ! And you are going away.” 

For Jeanne the hour of triumph was but a 
momentary resting-place in her career. 

She had France to save, and must press on, 


256 yOAN THE MAID. 

*and if she could, must press the sluggish 
court on. 

Orleans was delivered. 

Her king was crowned. 

But that was little ; and she had “ but little 
time’" to be with us. 

The fair fields of Prance must be delivered 
from the invader, so she had said from the 
first. 

And at Rheims her hardest campaign began. 
The people thought they had at times glimpses 
of the invisible hosts that succored her. 

At Orleans it was reported the patron saints, 
the bishops St. Euvert and St. Aignan, had 
marched in pontifical robes around the city; 
and at the moment when, lifting her standard 
against the walls of the fort, she gave orders for 
the last assault, a dove was seen hovering over 
her. 

At Troyes a swarm of white butterflies made 
the air radiant. 

Before the journey to Rheims, cavaliers, 
armed at all points, riding on great white horses, 
had been beheld careering in the air, across 
the seas from Spain to Brittany, crying, “ Be 
not dismayed.” 

But none but Jeanne herself knew how the 
swarms of envy and sloth, and base selfishness, 
perpetually buzzed and swarmed around her, 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 257 

blinding men’s eyes, if not her own, and sting- 
ing her to the heart when they dared. 

She shed many tears alone, or when at mass 
in the churches. 

She wept much, radiant and gay as she 
could be between her tears ; and she had reason. 

The great and good Gerson before he died 
had warned the people, that though God had 
surely sent them succor through the Maid, “as 
His people of old resisted Moses and the pro- 
phets, so might they reject her.” 

And so indeed they did, crowning her with 
titles and honors, showering gifts and glories on 
her, and all the time piercing and straitening 
her heart by setting all her noble purpose at 
naught. 

Soon after the coronation she was riding 
across Ferty-en- Valois with the king, between 
Dunois, her faithful friend, and the Archbishop 
of Rheims, and as the people gathered round 
them, shouting “Noel, Noel!” welcoming the 
king she said, 

“ This is a good people. I have never seen 
a people who so rejoice in their noble prince” — 
(her loyal heart was full only of France and her 
king) — “ would that I might be so happy as to 
end my days, and be buried in this land.” 

“Oh, Jeanne,” said the Archbishop, “in 
what country think you, ye shall die?” 


258 


yOAN THE MAID. 


“ Where it shall please God,” she replied, 
for I know neither the hour, nor the place, any 
more than you do. And I would, it might 
please God, my Creator, that I might return 
now, and lay aside my armor, and that I might 
go back to help my father and my mother to 
keep their flocks and herds, with my sister and 
my brothers. They would be very glad to see 
me.” 

She wished it. But she did not will it. 

She willed^ as she said, from the beginning, 
believing it to be God’s will, to drive the Eng- 
lish from France. 

“ This,” she said, ‘ from the beginning to the 
end, from Vaucouleurs to the stake, “she was 
sent to do.’ ” 

And this she did, though on earth she saw it 
not. 

Not having accomplished this she would not, 
willingly, either repose or die. 

And so, in July, began those weary months 
of hindrance and treachery and secret opposi- 
tion which ended in her capture on the followingf 
May. 

Testimonies of homage came to her from all 
sides. The Comte d’Armagnac wrote to her 
from Spain to ask which of the then so-called 
popes was the true; Bona Visconti wrote to en- 
treat her to reinstate him in his duchy of Milan ; 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


259 


the aged poetess, Christine de Pisane, revived, 
at seventy, to compare her in verse to Gideon, 
Esther, and Judith. The people thronged to 
touch but the hem of her garments. 

But she knew too well that what seemed a 
triumphal entry was but the way to the cross. 

Every step forward towards the deliverance 
of the kingdom was taken against a reluctant 
court. And at last their blind selfishness suc- 
ceeded. 

The king and army she had brought victo- 
rious to Rheims, and to the very walls of Paris, 
were, against their own will, as well as that of 
the Maid, led back to the Loire. 

All that dreary winter this slow warfare, 
.which was prolonging the waste of French as 
much as of English blood, dragged heavily on. 

And I, meanwhile smitten with fever, lay 
weary and exhausted on a bed of suffering, un- 
able to stir. I seemed to suffer and linger 
through all the weary winter in the echo of the 
struggles of Jeanne and all that was noblest in 
France against La Tremouille and the Arch- 
bishop of Rheims. 

There are moments in the life of nations 
when their noblest rouse them above them- 
selves. And there are moments when their 
basest sink them below themselves. 

But for me, on my bed of pain, had dawned 


26 o 


yOAN THE MAID. 


one ever-brightening brotherly hope which sus- 
tained me through much. 

It came about in this wise. 

Just after the return of the Lady Blanche, 
when the Seigneurs de Mailly had once more 
departed, and Owen and I were left alone with 
the family of the castle, during the settlenient 
of the ransom, one of the fearful epidemics, 
always lingering in the train of war, was creep- 
ing insidiously through the country. 

My brother came to me one night, with the 
old languor in his manner. 

The old life had been resumed for a few 
days ; I rambling with the child through the 
forests, and paying my last visits to the cur6, 
Owen riding to the chase with the Lady and 
Sir Tanneguy. 

So the last week wore on. 

It was Saturday, and on Monday, all being 
arranged, we were to leave for England. 

Owen stood looking out our window, down 
the valley, where we had stood watching the 
cavalcade depart for Rheims. 

The book of the Imitation” (Consolation) 
lay open upon the table. 

“ That eloquent old monk, after all, did not 
know what he was leaving when he abandoned 
the world,” he said. 

“ But we are not leaving the world,’ I said. 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


261 


“We are only abandoning other peoples’ world 
for our own.” 

He was silent for a few moments, and then 
he continued, 

“ It grieves me to leave her to those worldly 
seigneurs, to be pulled down from her own true 
height, down and down.” 

“ She has chosen,” I said. 

“ There may be choice and no choice ! ” he 
replied oracularly. “ Many women besides 
queens have to submit to destinies they would 
never have chosen, and submitting, of course to 
seem to choose'* 

My indignation rose irrepressibly. 

“ Can you believe the soft velvety falsehoods 
still?” I said. 

“ She has said nothing,” he replied. “ Only 
if one has eyes, one cannot help seeing. ” 

The old spell was closing in once more 
around him. Yet there was a dismal kind of 
consolation to me in seeing that it was not 
through love, or even passion, my brother was 
held and wounded now, but through self-love 
and vanity. 

“ She does not love you, nor you her,” I 
said. “You both love merely the image of 
yourselves in each other’s eyes.” 

“ Love ! ” he exclaimed. “ Do you think I 
could be false to Cecilie, and break her heart?” 


262 


yOAN THE MAID. 


I am tempted to think sometimes,” I s Jd 
“ there would be more fire in the ashes of a 
spent-out love for another than in these poor 
reflections of love which* seems only compla- 
cency with Cecilie for loving you. The ashes 
of a poor hearth-fire are warmer than the beams 
of the moon which is only a looking-glass to the 
sun. Have you no heart to beat or break for 
Cecilie ? ” 

Owen only replied, 

“You are scarcely speaking like yourself,” 
and turned away. 

Perhaps I was not speaking like myself. For 
the next day the fever had seized me, and by 
that Monday morning I could not stir. 

Then the Lady Blanche was roused into the 
most genuine alarm. She said that, deeply as 
she regretted to do anything that might seem 
harsh, it was impossible her maternal heart 
could suffer her to allow me to continue under 
the same roof with her child. 

And, accordingly, I was packed up in a litter 
and carried, by the old cure’s permission, to his 
house near the church at Domremy. 

The lady would have been content for 
Owen to stay. 

But my brother had no hesitation ; he and 
Peter followed me, shaking off the dust from 
their feet at the castle. 


PEECIVAVS STORY. 263 

And SO those months of most bitter and 
sweet experience began. 

I suppose the moving through the air in- 
creased my illness. 

It passed from one stage, and one form of 
suffering to another, the various leeches giving 
various names, small-pox, black fever, low fever, 
I know not what. They had all one remedy, 
sweating or bleeding, and none of them had 
any cure ; so my strength oozed and oozed 
away. 

After the first two months there was a lull, 
and Owen insisted on sending Peter home with 
tidings. 

Then came a relapse, and for months longer, 
through the snowy winter and the languid 
spring, I was left aione with Owen. 

No longer to take care of him ; to be taken 
care of by him, body and soul, until our hearts 
and souls grew together with an intensity of 
trust and mutual care which would to me have 
been worth a hundred-fold such months of suf- 
fering. 

It was like lying still and seeing my brother’s 
soul born afresh into a new, beautiful childhood, 
his true self rising like a winged creature from 
the shrivelled chrysalis of the old. Also with a 
delicious feeling of sharing in it, in some myster- 
ious way, through my anguish and helpless- 


264 


yOAN THE MAID. 


ness, something such as I suppose mothers feel, 
for joy that a man is born unto the world. 

I suppose the recollection of the controversy 
of that Saturday, controversy being so rare with 
us, lingered dimly on into the wanderings of the 
fever. 

For, at first, my remembrance is of a longing 
to repair some wrong done to Owen, pleading 
for him with Cecilie, as if I had wronged her by 
suspecting him, pleading for myself with my 
mother that I had tried hard to be true to her 
dying charge. 

I suppose something of the unreturned love 
came out in my ravings, for, although Owen 
never breathed a word of guessing my secret to 
me, there was a depth of meaning in his voice 
when I got a little better, and tried to thank 
him, he stopped me and half-sobbed out, 

“What have I done? You gave up your 
whole world for me ! 

Then I learned, day by day, the beautiful 
things in my brother, which had made every one 
love him. They had not loved the false in him, 
the worst of them, but the buddings and flashes 
of the true which was to be. 

The quick responsiveness to every feeling of 
others, the insight like a woman’s, without words, 
into unexpressed wants ! 

He never asked me a question at the wrong 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


265 


time, seldom perplexed me by asking me any- 
thing. He always knew, from the hours and 
kinds of food, to the amount of spiritual thought, 
how much I could bear. 

Countless thoughts came to me in that ill- 
ness ; joyful, yet awful glimpses into the ways of 
Providence, and the necessity of reverently 
waiting on them. 

So delicately interwoven, of such fine invisi- 
ble fibres is the texture of His work, that we, 
when with our dim eyes and clumsy fingers, we 
would set some tangle right, too often are irrev- 
erently plunging through and breaking the 
beginning of some finest web of His designing. 

So often Father Adam’s words recurred to 

me, 

“ The sheep best help one another by follow- 
ing the shepherd close.” 

To act Providence for others we require om- 
niscience. To care truly for another, the first 
thing is to be content continually to have our 
plans crossed, our impatience checked, to be de- 
layed when it seems to us the moment for haste, 
to be turned back when it seems to us the mo- 
ment for going forward. 

All those months, nay years, I had been 
tiying to fulfil my charge to take care of Owen ; 
and now I was laid down, bound hand and foot, 
unable to think, at a crisis when I should have 


266 


JOAN THE MAID. 


thought my most wary watching essential to 
him. And he seemed to learn more in a brief 
space, by the mere necessity of taking care of 
me than by all my laborious taking care of him. 

Oh, holy and marvellous mystery of family- 
life setting helplessness to melt away selfishness, 
weakness to feed on strength and consecrate it : 
slowly perfecting in men the likeness of the 
Son of Man, by simply turning their hearts 
away from self to those who depend on them. 

How I had wrestled with those spells of 
flattery which seemed to me eating out and de- 
stroying the inner life of my brother. 

And lying there, helpless and in pain, I saw 
them drop off him like cobwebs. 

For my illness was no easy one to bear or to 
help. 

It is a strange experience to find the body 
which has hitherto worked so harmoniously with 
the spirit that one scarcely thinks of them as 
separate, becoming a helpless, loathsome burden 
of flesh, a peril to others to touch, and a pain to 
see ; to find our very bodies, as it were, the cross 
to which we are nailed. 

And then to find all the humiliation and 
helplessness and anguish working out for my 
beloved, what all my care and thinking seemed 
to have failed to do. Intense, awful glimpses, 
indeed, came thus to me of the possible mean- 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 267 

ings of the miseries and sicknesses of this whole 
body of the church and of humanity. 

And, during all the winter of my sickness the 
Maid was carrying on her last campaign for 
France ; struggling against the king himself to 
save for him his kingdom and himself, against the 
mean suspicion and the base treachery of La 
Tremouille and the Archbishop of Rheims, and 
all the hosts of sloth ; the people indeed with 
her, some of the captains and nobles eager for 
her to lead them on, yet in the inmost, and on 
the highest level too often terribly alone, glori- 
ously alone, in her unfaltering purpose of rescue, 
with her “voices” and her king. 

In a dim way she was with me throughout 
my illness, mingled confusedly, as in my dream 
at Orleans, with my mother and Cecilie. 

But always it seemed now as if the Maid, her- 
self, like myself, was struggling with delirious 
dreams, helpless and bound, against inaccessible 
foes, her foes and ours. For never could the 
thought abandon me that in driving the English 
from France she was saving England. 

And, indeed, the conflict she was sustaining 
during those months from July to May, was more 
like the struggle of a nightmare dream than any- 
thing real. 

Everything real was in her favor, a victori- 
ous army, cities ai)d country panting to be deliv* 


268 


yOAN THE MAID. 


ered from an enemy, money and aid of all kinds 
pouring in from all sides, a consecrated king, the 
enemy discouraged ; nothing against her but the 
sloth illusions of the king’s court. 

As I heard of the campaign, from time to 
time, all seemed to me unreal and confused as in 
a feverish dream. 

Nothing seemed to hinder the French from 
victory, but some inward mysterious indisposi- 
tion to be victorious. 

There were sieges raised without reason, mock 
battles in which the hostile armies confronted 
each other for days; La Tremouille, at Crespy, 
caracoling ostentatiously before the English army 
until he chanced to fall from his horse ; and then 
retreats without defeats on either side. 

Until, at Christmas, on one of my recoveries, 
I heard that at last La Pucelle and the king were 
before Paris, and the assault was to be made in 
earnest. The Duke d’Alen^on had made a bridge 
over the Seine, in order to attack the city on its 
weakest side. 

And then came suddenly the news that the 
Maid had been wounded in the assault, and 
though herself (as at Orleans,) unmindful of the 
pain and eager to press on, had been carried 
forcibly from the walls ; that the king had him- 
self broken down the bridge which might have 
opened to him his capital, without explanation 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


26 q 


or reason, and that the whole French army were 
in full retreat (retreat so rapid that it looked like 
flight) for the old pleasant country on the banks 
of the Loire, where, whoever reigned over the 
kingdom. La Tremouille could reign unhindered 
over the king. 

After that came rumors of terrible English 
vengeance on the country abandoned by her 
king, of cities re-taken and pillaged, of fields rav- 
aged, the whole Northern provinces, and the 
Isle of France forsaken and abandoned, as the 
reward of their loyalty to Charles, to the fiercest 
retaliations of our troops. 

And mingled with curses on the king and the 
court, but too well-deserved, came ungrateful 
and doubtful murmurs against the Maid herself, 
as if her power were waning and her mission 
over. 

Rumors also came of a foolish prophetess 
called Catherine, who promised victory without 
fighting, and was encouraged by the Archbishop 
of Rheims, as if to lower the Maid and her mis- 
sion by base parodies. 

Jeanne indeed, we heard, showed her wonted 
sense regarding this Catherine, and proposed to 
stay the night with her to see the heavenly Lady, 
who she professed to have seen, who never came. 

And as a still more effective test she proposed 
that Catherine should go to the siege of La 


2/0 yOAN" THE MAID. 

Charity ; but she declined, saying “ the weather 
was too cold ! ” 

Jeanne was, indeed, the same. 

From Marguerite la Touroulde, a widowed 
lady with whom she sojourned three weeks after 
the coronation at Rheims, the cur6 heard how 
she kept to her old paths of devotion and prayer, 
undazzled by adulation and victory. 

But the sadness at the depth of her heart 
weighed on my heart as I grew better through 
the spring of 1430. 

I thought of her idling away, as she would 
think, the precious months, with the king in Tou- 
raine, while the cry of desolated provinces and 
captured towns came from the land she would 
and could have saved, — pricked to the heart till 
her work was done I' 

Idling away the precious months when she 
knew “ she coidd not last more than a year 

The king tried to quiet her with patents of 
nobility, and permission to bear the royal arms. 

Her family bore them. But she, for herself, 
would never adopt any motto or heraldic device, 
but the simple words, “ Jesus, Maria.” 

And then, at last, when the valley of Vau- 
couleurs was growing bright with its coat of many 
colors, in May, came, like a thurderbolt on the 
village, where so many loved her, the terrible 
news that the Maid was captured by the Burgun- 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


271 


dians, abandoned, and left outside the gates of 
Compi^gne, dragged off her horse, bound, and 
thrown into prison. 

And with the terrible news came dark sus- 
picions of the basest ingratitude and treachery. 

“ I fear nothing but traitors f she had said at 
Chalons, to her old acquaintance at Epinal. And 
all recalled it now. 

Yet all the village believed it could but be a 
temporary check. 

The king would never suffer her to remain in 
captivity, the Maid to whom he owed his king- 
dom and his crown ! 

Losing her would teach the court what she is 
to us all. All France would rise to rescue the 
Maid who had rescued France. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


percival’s story. 

H ad the Maid, indeed, been basely and de- 
liberately betrayed and abandoned in the 
sally from Compiegne, when, as she was making 
her way back to the city, pursued by the Bur- 
gundians, the gates closed just as she reached 
them ? 

How could it be that every man with a heart 
in him did not insist on opening the gates, and 
rescuing her, the Maid, the young girl of eigh- 
teen who had saved Orleans, who had saved 
Compiegne, who was saving France ? 

But however it came about, the moment 
passed, the generous impulse which might have 
saved her was lacking, and Jeanne was dragged 
from her horse, seized by the men-at-arms, and 
carried off captive. 

Whether they betrayed her at the last or not, 
what was too certain was that treachery, envious 
plotting, and hatred, were the real cause of her 
capture, the treachery of the courtiers, to whose 
baseness her presence was a continual rebuke^ 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


273 


and the heartless ingratitude of the king she had 
crowned. 

There was bitter weeping at poor helpless 
little Domr^my, where she was so known and 
beloved, as the weary weeks went on and no tid- 
ings came of any attempt being made to save 
her. 

A terrible rumor reached us at one time that 
she had attempted to escape by rashly throwing 
herself from the tower of the castle, where she 
was imprisoned, and had all but killed herself. 

None of those who knew her brave and 
patient spirit would believe she had so sought 
to take her fate out of the hands of God. 

And by degrees the truth reached the 
village. 

She had been sorely tempted to attempt an 
escape. She had a severe inward conflict. Her 
voices, especially her beloved Saint Catherine, 
repeated every day that God would aid her. 
She replied that since God would aid her, she 
would like to try and aid herself. She would 
far rather die than fall into the hands of the 
English. 

At length they told her that Compi^gne was 
on the eve of being taken, and that every one in 
the town would be put to the sword, down to the 
children of seven years old. 

Then her passion of rescue vanquished her; 


yOAN- THE MAID. 


274 

and she tried to let herself down from the win- 
dow by straps of leather bound together. These 
broke, and she fell stunned and senseless on the 
ground. 

For three days she would not, or could not 
eat. But at last Saint Catherine “ cheered her 
once more, and told her to confess and ask par- 
don of God.” 

And then came pathetic accounts of the love 
and reverence she had won from the ladies of 
the castle where she was imprisoned. 

The same gentleness, and simplicity, and gen- 
erous care for all around, and love of God and 
love of France, and delight in her devotions, as 
had made her dear at Domremy ! 

It was impossible not to hope she would be 
set free. She was not in the hands of the 
English, but of the Burgundians, of a knight of 
good family, John of Luxembourg, a man actu- 
ated by no hatred to her, and with no defeats to 
avenge. 

But John of Luxembourg was poor, and 
Jeanne’s ransom was precious. 

He would have preferred, it was said, to 
receive the ransom from the King of France, and 
waited to see if any offer would be made. 

But not a finger was lifted up in that cold 
and cruel court to save her. 

The Archbishop of Rheims announced to his 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


275 


episcopal city the capture of the Pucelle, with a 
Pharisaic complacency, as a warning against van- 
ity and pride. “ It was a judgment of God,” he 
said, “ because she would not take counsel, but 
would do her own pleasure, because she was 
proud and loved fine clothes.” Also “ he knew 
a young shepherd of the mountains of G6vau- 
den who would do quite as much for them all as 
Jeanne.” 

And meantime the English were pressing for 
her to be delivered to them. 

And, alas ! unable to compass her execution in 
any other way (for to kill her as a mere prisoner of 
war would be contrary to all chivalry) they 
called in the aid of the Church. The University 
of Paris, and the Bishop of Beauvais, the trai- 
tor Cauchon, demanded her to be given up to 
the Inquisition as a heretic. 

On consideration of this being done, the Eng- 
lish Government offered John of Luxembourg, 
into whose hands she had fallen, ten thousand 
gold francs ; and in spite of the remonstrances 
and tears of the ladies of his family, he yielded 
to the base temptation, and the Maid was sold. 

One more instance of affectionate homage 
rendered her reached us at Domr^my. It was 
the last. 

At Abbeville, as her Burgundian captors 
were taking her to the English, the ladies of the‘ 


2^6 


yOAAT THE MAID. 


city came to visit her in prison, to show theif 
reverence and sympathy for the captive deliv- 
erer of France. From the beginning to the 
end good women never failed to understand, re- 
vere, and love her. Their kindness pleased and 
soothed her. She kissed them, “ aimablement ” 
when they took leave, asked their prayers, and 
said “ adieu ” in a way which meant much. 

Also at Crotoy, the chancellor of the cathe- 
dral of Amiens, then staying in the castle where 
she was imprisoned, confessed her, and adminis- 
tered to her the Eucharist. A terrible interval 
had to be gone through ere they suffered her 
to partake of her next and last communion. 

The Maid was sold to the English, and after 
that I could not bear to stay at Domremy. 

The cure and the simple villagers, as far as 
they knew me, knew that I myself believed her 
mission to be as much for the good of England 
as of France, to turn us by God’s mercy back 
from ravaging the fields and homes of France to 
cultivate our own fields, and minister to our own 
homes in England. 

But England was my fatherland; it was 
because I so loved her, that I could also love and 
revere the Maid. 

Patriotism, like family feeling, may be a mere 
exaggerated vanity, if we start from the selfish 
I ” to the “ my family, my country,” and seek 


PERCIVAVS S rOR Y 2/7 

for our country a glory as poor and selfish as 
for ourselves. 

But if it is true patriotism, an expanding of 
the waves of real love to the home, the neigh- 
bors, the country, we can no more desire ill- won 
glory, or mere increase of possessions for our 
country than for ourselves. 

To be ready to sacrifice everything rather 
than that our country should fail in her true 
destiny, should do anything ignoble or unjust, 
that seems to me true patriotism. 

And it was the anguish of fearing that the 
hatred and bitter resentment felt by most Eng- 
lishmen towards the Maid who had checked 
our victorious career would work itself out in 
cruel and pitiless revenge, which made it unen- 
durable to me to stay longer in the valley where 
her holy and loving childhood had passed, and 
where she was so beloved. 

I was still little fit for the journey ; but we 
resolved to take it in short stages and depart 
homeward at any cost. 

The ransom had been made to include us 
both on condition that we neither of us took 
arms again in th>s war against France. 

Once more I went over all the places hal- 
lowed by the presence, and the prayers of that 
most generous and brave and tender heart. 

The evening before we left I crept up alone 


278 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


to the little chapel in the wood, Notre Dame du 
Bourlaimont, where she used to pray so often 
alone, and to hang the garlands made under the 
Fairies’ Tree. 

As I knelt before the altar there, in an ag- 
ony of prayer for England and for the Maid, 
that my country might yet be saved from com- 
mitting a great wrong, a soft footstep came 
quietly up the aisle, and when I rose, I found 
that the child Beatrice had been kneeling beside 
me. 

We went silently together out of the church, 
and there, in the porch, she laid her little hands 
on mine, and said, her brown eyes fixed on mine 
with an expression of entire trust, 

“ They would never let me come to see you. 
But I know, whatever your people do, you will 
always love our Jeanne.” 

I am going home to-morrow,’’ I said. But 
every day, everywhere, I pray fo** Jeanne and 
for you.” 

“ Be happy for me,” she said. “ I am be- 
trothed, you know. You could not help being 
English,” she added, “and Jeanne did not hate 
the English. She only wanted them to go home 
and be good.” 

“ The Maid is from God, little one,’’ I said, 
‘and therefore like our blessed Lord, she is the 
friend and succorer of us all.” 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


279 


** And you,” she said, “ are to be a priest of 
the holy Church, and she is the friend and suc- 
corer of us all.” 

The tears gathered in her eyes, and tears to 
that repressed heart meant, not relief, as to a 
woman, but an agony of uncontrolable pain as 
to a man. She checked them, and with a sob, 
lifted up her face to kiss me. 

“You are my brother of Paradise,” she said. 
“ Talk to your sister of the little child, the little 
French sister, who loves you. Sir Raymond and 
I will speak of you. Adieu.” And turning to 
the old nurse who had come with her, she went 
hastily away. 

But once more she turned back and said, 
“ Whatever any one does or says, I shall always 
know you are true to the Maid.” 

And so the dear, tearful, childish voice ceased, 
and she vanished into the forest. 

Solitary and sad the forest anti the slopes 
and the meadows lay before me in the dim even- 
ing light; the forest where Jeanne had loved to 
pray, and where, some said, the birds knew her 
and came to her ; the carefully tilled fields her 
busy capable hands had helped to cultivate ; the 
meadows where she had kept the village flocks. 

The village church bell sounded up the val- 
ley as I stood there. 

I went along the village street. Thnre were 


28 o 


JOAN THE MAID. 


the companions of her childhood, Haumette, 
Guillemette, and her little darling Mengette, still 
a child. 

And in the house, which I could scarcely bear 
to pass, sat the mother who had taught her Our 
Father, the father who had preferred for her 
honor to life, now in anguish, knowing her in 
the hands of my people, of her enemies. 

Too probable the voice so clear and strong, 
yet so soft and womanly, as I heard it in its mes- 
sage of mercy at Orleans, would be heard on that 
humble threshold no more. 

There was little sleep for us that night. 

Once more, the next morning, we heard at 
early mass the voice of the cur^ who had con- 
fessed the Maid, and knew how true and good 
she was. 

And then, late in October, with the yellow 
leaves falling slowly and noiselessly through the 
misty air, we left the quiet valley which Jeanne 
had left a year and a half before, in early spring, 
to go forth and save France. 

And as we rode, she, the Maid, also was rid- 
ing from St. Valery by Eu and Dieppe to Rouen, 
no more with grateful throngs of her rescued 
countrymen pressing to kiss her garments, 
guarded by men who knew her only as theii 
enemy, and a sorceress and a heretic. 


' PER CIV A US S TOR V. 


281 


Too surely I felt she would never tread these 
her native fields again. And yet a solemn con- 
viction was on me that she had not failed, but 
that her work for England and for France was 
done 


CHAPTER XV 


percival’s story 

HE autumn had chilled and bared the world 



-L to early winter before the Maid entered 
Rouen. 

To us who had seen her last at Orleans, and 
remembered her entrance and her departure 
thence, the contrast was not to be forgotten. 

Then the captains, nobles, princes she had 
led to victory, were riding as attendants by her 
side — the people she had rescued, pressing 
around her to secure the life-long remembrance 
of but one touch, and she at home with all ; with 
the princes, for they were her brothers in saving 
France and their king ; with the poor, because 
she knew the heart of the poor, and always loved 
to help them. 

And now, the grim escort of foes, whom she 
had defeated, of whose language she scarcely 
knew more than the oath which gave us our 
name in France (“ Godons or “ Goddem ”), 
men to fall into whose hands she knew too well 
was worse for her than to die, who believed, 
or wished to believe her, witch, heretic, every% 


PERCIVAL'S STORY, 283 

thing they would hate their sisters or daughters 
to be. 

In the streets of Rouen she was received 
with a fanatical fury and hatred which was scarce- 
ly to be wondered at in soldiers who have been 
checked by one peasant-girl in a career of un- 
broken victory, and, alas, of unhindered pillage, 
and now thought that her capture proved her 
success to have been the work of the devil. 

Many would have desired to have her tied 
in a sack and thrown into the Seine at once. 

But a profounder policy, and a far more 
diabolical hatred lay underneath this popular 
fury in the hearts of the men in authority, lay 
and ecclesiastical, who had her destiny in their 
hands. 

To destroy her influence in France, to prove 
England right, and restore our conquests, it was 
necessary, not merely to kill the Maid, but to 
slander her, to prove her no Christian, no true 
Maid, forever an enemy of God and truth and 
goodness. 

And for this purpose the tribunal to judge 
her must be ecclesiastical, and the death she 
must die, — as had been perceived from the 
first, by her enemies at Orleans, — the death she 
must die must be the death of a witch and an 
apostate, death by fire. 

For the sentence, terrible enough to sully 


284 


yOAN THE MAID, 


her own life and work, they must go, alas, to 
the priests of Him who would not break the 
bruised reed. 

For the model of her torture they must go 
to the frightful pictures of hell itself not long 
before flashed before the eyes of Christendom by 
the fiery genius of the Florentine, Dante. 

She was carried to the chateau, and there 
thrown into a cage where her enemies were al- 
lowed to come and see her. 

Among them, by an incredible baseness, with 
the Earls of Warwick and Staflbrd, came John 
of Luxembourg, who had sold her. 

He said he came to ransom her if she would 
promise no more to bear arms against England. 

She said he mocked her ; she said she knew 
the English would make her die ; and she added 
that if one hundred thousand more“Godons” 
were in France, than at present, they should 
never have the kingdom. 

Lord Stafford was so enraged, he would have 
run his sword through her ; but Lord Warwick 
withheld him. 

There were agonies in store for her, to which 
the cage and the sword were indeed mercies. 

The journey to Rouen had exhausted the 
little strength I had regained ; and I could not 
proceed to England. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


285 


Owen would fain have waited on with me, 
but I prevailed on him to go, and what was more, 
to be married at once, by Father Adam, and not 
to wait, as he had wished, till I was in holy 
orders. 

In the midst of all the distress and anguish 
for England and the Maid, a quiet well of joy 
was ever springing up in my heart for Owen. 
For the blessed life of caring for others through 
which the heavenly Father trains His sons to the 
imitation of Christ, had begun in Owen, never 
more to cease. 

And to me had been given that best joy of 
so loving, that the joy of our beloved becomes 
simply and naturally our own joy, their well-be- 
ing our well-being ; so that to follow Owen in 
spirit to Danescombe to the welcomes and the 
love there, was a true happiness that sustained 
me through the dark months that followed, as it 
sustains a tired laborer to come home at even- 
ing to the welcome of wife and child. 

For I had resolved not to leave Rouen until 
I saw what would become of the Maid. 

Not the Maid only, but England, our own 
England, was on her trial at Rouen through that 
drear and awful winter, and for that matter 
France also. 

And what least aid the least Englishman 
could render to save England from a great crime, 


286 


yOJN’ THE MAID. 


or to solace a true saint in her martyrdom, could 
best be rendered here. 

And thus my brother left, and I took up my 
abode with a quiet old priest attached to the 
cathedral, and continued my preparations for the 
priesthood. 

And so, then, as afterwards, I gathered up 
every possible detail as to the process against La 
Pucelle. If nothing more could be done for her, 
it was something to add one more to the number 
of those who knew the truth concerning her. 

It seemed as if, to the end of time, the two na- 
tions, French and English, and the two orders, 
ecclesiastical and lay, should be able to throw no 
stones at each other as to their share in this 
crime. 

Of the tribunal which condemned her, every 
member, from the judge to the recorders and ush- 
ers, was French. The University of Paris and 
the Inquisition sanctioned and commanded all. 

But the princes, captains, and statesmen who 
paid the judges and assessors, and who threat- 
ened any who ventured to speak of mercy, with 
death, the guards who never left her a moment’s 
solitude night or day were English. 

And yet, if I had to choose among all those 
guilty of her death the men in all the world I 
would most have shrunk from, it would not 
have been the hard Duke of Bedford, the violent 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


287 


Warwick, or even the arch-murderer Cauchon, 
Bishop of Beauvais, but the traitor L’Oyseleur, 
who confessed her, and the king of France she 
had crowned, for whom she pleaded with God 
and man at the stake, who, without one gener- 
ous effort, let her die. 

Of those who loyally befriended her in the 
least thing, I will give every name and every de- 
tail. Alas, they were so few, they are easy 
enough to remember! 

And amoi^ those also, thank God, there were 
English as well as French. 

In the first place stands Nicholas de Houppe- 
ville. When summoned to be one of the asses- 
sors at the trial he declared that the prosecution 
was not legal, because the Bishop of Beauvais 
was on the side" hostile to La Pucelle, and 
because he made himself judge of a cause al- 
ready judged by his metropolitan, the Maid 
being approved of and sanctioned by the Arch- 
bishop of Rheims, in whose province Beauvais 
was. 

The Bishop of Beauvais was so enraged at 
this declaration, when De Houppeville came to 
take his seat at the tribunal, he excluded him, 
had him thrown into prison, and would have ex- 
iled him to England or thrown him into the Seine, 
if he had not been rescued by the intervention 
of others But the warning was sufficiently plain 


288 


yOAJ\r THE MAID. 


to any who dared to utter a truth favorable to 
the Maid. 

Again and again during the prosecution the 
slightest leaning to mercy was repressed with 
threats ; and the vice-inquisitor himself, having 
shown himself not docile enough, was threatened 
with being thrown into the river. 

One man gathers and represents in himself 
the guilt of that wicked prosecution. 

“ It is you,'' Jeanne herself said, on the day 
of her death, to the Bishop of ^^auvais, “ w/io 
have made me die^ 

The great crimes of the world are perhaps 
not always committed by the greatest criminals. 

In that central Trial, which was the test and 
trial of our whole human race, which lasted, not 
for months, but one terrible prolonged night, ex- 
cept with the very few who instigated it, how 
slight the motives were, and how faint the 
passions ! 

Pilate certainly did not hate. He would have 
risked everything, except the favor of Caesar, to 
save. 

The multitude did not hate. They had, at the 
last, to be “ persuaded^” to demand Barabbas. 

Of the chief-priests, possibly fanatical hatred 
actuated a few and political ambition and feat 
the rest. 


PERCIVATS STORY. 


289 


And in trial, which lasted four months, the 
English chiefs who originated it certainly hated 
the Maid who had ruined all their political 
schemes. 

Of the assessors, probably many accepted the 
post because, at the moment, it was the safest 
and easiest thing to do ; and as the trial went 
on, evidently not a few, moved by the simplicity 
and courage of the Maid’s answers, would gladly 
have saved her. Even Cauchon himself could 
not have hated her, except politically, as the 
cause of his having been exiled from his diocese. 
Behind him lay a lost diocese, before him (by 
English promise) a possible archbishopric. The 
triumph of Jeanne had lost him one ; her con- 
demnation might gain him the other. She was 
but an unavoidable step in the ladder he had 
set himself to climb. 

What there had been in the lives of these 
men before, which made it possible for them to 
be so blinded, and to act as they did, we know 
not ; what causes and what excuses lay hidden 
deep in their former lives ; or whether, indeed, 
in all cases, the worst crimes are those commit- 
ted from passions exceptionally fierce, or from 
the small self-interests so terribly ordinary. 

One only is the judge of men, the Son of 
Man. 

We may not judge, lest we condemn the in- 


290 


yOAN THE MAID. 


nocent ; yet, on the other hand, we are not to 
excuse, lest we call evil good. 

Something in himself had made it possible for 
the Bishop of Beauvais to blind and steel his 
heart during those four months to the unveiling 
of as pure and loving a soul as ever shone before 
men, and to torture one of the Father’s beloved 
children, one of the Lord Christ’s anointed ones 
to death. 

God knows what that something was, and I 
suppose, now, he knows himself. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


percival’s story. 

/^N Tuesday, the 20th of February, the Maid 
was summoned to appear the next day 
before her judges. 

She answered that she would willingly do so. 
But she requested that assessors on the French 
side might be added to those on the English. 
And she entreated as a favor that she might 
be allowed to hear mass before appearing. 

The Bishop of Beauvais, president of the 
tribunal, refused permission for her to attend 
mass, on account of her “ abominable cloth- 
ing” — an indication as to the point on which 
the accusation would principally press. To the 
request for assessors of the French party no 
answer was vouchsafed. 

Already she had remained more than two 
months chained to her block in thp castle 
prison, her life of continual enterprise and 
enthusiastic appreciation exchanged for one 
of unbroken monotony, without fresh air, 
■^(tl^oqt movement, without the Church ser- 


292 


yOAN THE MAID, 


vices she delighted in, without one sympa- 
thetic look or word. 

Well for her that the previous months, 
brilliant as they seemed, had been no mere 
triumphal progress, but, in the innermost, a 
hard battle step by step, with coldness, and 
misunderstanding, and treachery. 

Well for her that her devotions had been 
no mere religious shows and luxuries, but a 
silent drinking into her silent spirit of the 
waters of life. 

Well for her that she came to her last cam- 
paign no untrained warrior in the Holy War. 

The first session was in the chapel of the 
castle. 

It began at eight o’clock on Tuesday morn- 
ing, the 2 1st of February. The first demand 
was that she should swear to tell the truth on 
each point on which she was interrogated. 

There the contest began. She held that she 
had been intrusted with a secret revelation 
for the King Charles VII. She held also that 
in all things made known to her from heaven, 
the sanction of heaven was needed before it 
was lawful for her to utter them. And from 
this point, her duty to God and to her king, no 
menaces, nor entreaties, nor subtlest persuasion 
of trained casuists could move her. 

For what relates to my father and my 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


293 


mother, and what I have done since I took 
the way to France (^fai pris le chemin de 
France^ I will willingly swear ; but as to the 
revelations which I have had of God, I have 
never said anything of these save to the King 
Charles, and I will say nothing, even if they 
cut off my head, because my counsel (the 
Voices) have forbidden me to tell this to any 
one.’* 

Beyond this she would not go. To this she 
swore on her knees with her hands on the 
Gospel. 

But ere that point was reached, the Maid 
had been assailed with such a prolonged tumult 
of persuasions and accusations from the asses- 
sors, several speaking at once, that it was felt to 
be a desecration of the chapel to hold another 
session there. 

After the oath the bishop asked her name 
and surname, as of a child at the catechism. 

“ In my own country they called me Jean- 
nette,” she answered. “ Since I have been in 
France, they call me Jeanne. Of the surname I 
do not know.” 

Surnames had not yet become fixed among 
her peasant folk. She explained afterwards 
that in her country daughters frequently took 
their mother’s surname. 

“ Where were you born ? ” 


294 


THE MAID. 


“At Domr^my, which makes one with 
Greux. At Greux is the principal church.” 

“ What are your father and mother called ? ’ 

“ My father is called Jacques d’Arc ; my 
mother Isabelle Romee.” 

“ Where were you baptized ? ” 

“ At Domr^my.’’ 

Then as to her godmothers and godfather, 
and her age. 

She was about nineteen years old. 

“ What did she know ? ” 

“ I have learned from my mother,” she said, 
“the Our Father, the Hail Mary ; the ‘ I believe 
in God.’ It is from my mother that I hold my 
belief.” 

Before dismissing her, the bishop forbid her 
to escape from prison, under penalty of being 
convicted of heresy. 

She replied that she did not accept the pro- 
hibition, that no one could accuse her of break- 
ing faith if she escaped, for she had never given 
any promise. And she complained that they 
had bound her with iron fetters. 

Yet when it was replied that this was ne- 
cessary, on account of her having previously tried 
to escape, with her characteristic candor and 
straight-forwardness, she said, 

“ It is true, I did, and I still would escape. 
It is the right of every prisoner.” Like the 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 


295 

primitive African martyr, St. Perpetua, she 
simply could not call a pitcher anything but a 
pitcher. Truth was an atmosphere out of which 
she could not breathe. 

So she was remanded to her cell, and the 
first interrogatory was over. 

She was remanded to her cell in the round 
tower of the castle. No companionship was per- 
mitted her, but not a moment’s solitude ; the 
incessant watching of a guard from the lowest 
class of soldiers harassed her night and day. 

Worse than this. In her isolation among 
enemies they sent her a traitor, a priest, Nicolas 
I’Oyseleur, who pretended to have pity for her, 
and to know her own D'omr^my. He spoke to her 
of her people and her country, as a friend — at 
first as a layman ; and, then, to complete his 
treachery, he acknowledged that he was a priest, 
and received her confessions, and gave her advice 
all through the trial, as a friend. 

He was one of the very few who recom- 
mended that the torture should be applied to 
her. He pursued her with his false friendliness 
to the last. 

But at the very last the most terrible ven- 
geance possible fell on him, as on Judas. 

When she was being led to the stake, a sud- 
den passion and terror of remorse fell on him. 
He fought recklessly to break through the guard 


296 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


and to entreat her forgiveness, but in vain. They 
drove him away with mockery and menaces. 

And yet she had companionship, familiar to 
her and sacred. 

She had her Voices, and her God ; her King 
* Messire.” 

“ I call on our Lord and our Lady, that they 
may send me counsel and comfort,” she said. 

“ In what terms do you seek them ? ” 

‘ Most sweet God (tres doux Dieu), in 
honor of your holy passion, I desire you, if you 
love me, to reveal to me what I ought to answer 
to these churchmen. I know well, as to the 
dress (the man’s clothes) the commandment which 
made me take it ; but I know not in what way I 
ought to leave it. Wherefore, let it please you 
to teach me.’ And then,” she said, “ they 
came.” 

They came. She was not left alone. 

On the next day the tribunal met at the door 
of the great hall of the castle. 

Jean Beaupere, Chancellor of the University 
of Paris (in place of the noble and holy Gerson 
who had sanctioned the Maid, and had warned 
France not to reject her as Israel had rejected 
Moses), conducted the interrogatory. 

He began in a honeyed tone, and sought to 
induce her to take the general oath she had 
refused. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


297 


But nothing could move her. 

Her soul seemed overwhelmed to see that 
these ministers of God would not see the work 
of God, recognized by the divines of Poitiers, 
and by so many. 

“ If you knew well about me, you would wish 
I were out of your hands ; for I have done noth- 
ing but by revelation,’’ she said. 

He asked if she had learned any trade in her 
youth. She said she had learned to sew and to 
spin, and (her only boast, poor child) that she 
would not fear to sew or spin with any woman in 
Rouen. 

They asked her about her confessions. 

“ Had she confessed to her cur^, and com- 
municated at Easter?” 

She had.” 

“ Had she communicated also at other fes- 
tivals ? ” 

“ Pass on,” she said, “ passez outre.” 

The blending of discrimination with simplicity 
in her was marvellous. Or rather her simplicity 
gave her discrimination ; she saw clearly because 
her eye was single. Her reverent and trustful 
spirit shone through to the last. She asked the 
theologians quite simply to explain to her if there 
were two popes, and what the “ Church Mili- 
tant ” meant. But she could never be seduced 
into making the tribunal a confessional. 


298 


yOAN THE MAID, 


Baffled in their intrusion into her inner life, 
again they badgered her about the oath. 

Wearied, she said, “ I come from God, de la 
part de Dieu, I have nothing to do here. 
Send me back to God from whom I come.'’ 

Alas ! they were only too eager to do so. 

Then Jean Beaupere, with a voice of inteiest 
— he always began with honeyed words — asked 
her how long it was since she had neither eaten 
nor drunk anything? ” 

It was Lent. 

If she had broken her fast, she would have 
made herself liable to be accused of contempt for 
the Church. 

She replied, “ I have neither drunk nor 
eaten since yesterday at noon.” 

Fasting, she had to endure for hours these 
interrogatories. Thus, every snare laid for her 
only served to bring out her uprightness and 
innocence. She - scarcely ever even lost her 
sweetness of temper, or gave a hasty or worried 
answer. 

Jean Beaupere returned to her ‘‘ Voices.” 
When had she heard them last ? 

“Yesterday and to-day, in the morning, at 
Vespers, and at the Ave Maria.” Her beloved 
church bells were all the share left her now in 
the services ! 

The heavenly friends had waked her, she 


FERCIVAVS S7VRY. 299 

said, without touching her. Whether they were 
in the room or not, she knew not. They were 
in the castle. “ Did she kneel to listen, to give 
them thanks ? ” Being in bed, she replied, she 
gave thanks, and sat up and joined her hands, 
and implored guidance ; and then the Voices 
told her to “ answer boldly, and God would help 
her.” 

And, penetrated with the conviction of the 
reality of her mission, she turned to Bishop 
Cauchon, and said — 

“You say you are my judge; take heed 
what you do, for, in truth, I am sent from God, 
and you place yourself in great danger.” 

All through, there were moments when all 
thought of her being on her trial for life at a 
human tribunal seemed to leave her. In her 
glorious, heroic habit of saving, she forgot her- 
self in the thought that her judges were at the 
tribunal of God, and that she must plead with 
them not to injure themselves. 

A girl of nineteen, without counsel, bad- 
gered and pursued for months by learned doc- 
tors, to whom she would fain have knelt as 
ministers of God, she all the time stood, in faith, 
at the Judgment Seat of God, and plead with 
Him for them. 

“I believe firmly, as firmly as I believe the 
Christian faith, and that God has redeemed us 


300 yOAN THE MAID. 

from the pains of hell, that these voices come 
from God.” 

And she told how they said to her, “ Ne 
chaille pas ton martyre. Be not dismayed at 
thy martyrdom, thou shalt come at last to the 
Paradise of God.” 

“ If she was so sure of Paradise, then,” they 
answered derisively, “ why did she confess? ” 

“ One cannot keep one’s conscience too clean,’’ 
she answered. 

“ Why, then,” resumed Jean Beaup^re, 
“ does not the Voice speak to the king him- 
self?” 

‘‘ I know not if it is the will of God,” she 
said. “Without the grace of God I could do 
nothing.” 

Bishop Cauchon perceived at once that 
these simple words might prove a snare to en- 
tangle her, and intervened with a question 
which one of the accusers dared to say she need 
not answer. 

“ Are you,” he asked, “ in the grace of 
God?” 

If she said “ Yes ” it would be presumption 
while a “ No ” might prove her consciously in 
mortal sin. She felt no indignation, she saw no 
snare, but, with her eyes fixed like a trustful 
child’s on heaven, walked fearlessly on, and 
replied. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


301 


** If I am not, please God to put me in it ; if I 
am, please God to keep me there.” 

“ Si jeny suis, Dieu veuille my mettre ; et, st 
f y suisy Dieu veuille mly garderl* 

And she added that nothing in the world 
would afflict her so much as to think she was not 
in the grace of God. She thought if she were 
living in sin, the Voice would not come to her. 
Ashamed and confounded, they abandoned that 
track ; and Jean Beaupere led her back to Dom- 
r^my. 

She spoke freely of her childhood, of the 
Lady’s tree, and the well beside it, said to have 
healing power. She had sung and danced under 
it with her playmates ; the beautiful tree they 
called the “ fair May.” She had woven garlands 
there for the image of the Holy Virgin. But 
of fairies or miraculous cures she herself knew 
nothing. 

And so day after day the cruel baiting of 
the noble and gentle creature went on. 

Yet there must have been times, I think, 
when she had a kind of natural intellectual en- 
joyment in the baffling of her enemies, smitten 
as they were into folly and stupidity by their 
own falsehood. 

One after another they were kept at bay by 
her clear, keen words, keen as sunbeams, or the 
glance of her own clear, pitiful eyes. 


302 


THE MJID. 


** She had had prayers made for her sword,” 
they asserted, the sword taken from the church 
of St. Catharine of Fierbois. 

“ It is easy to see I would wish my armor 
to be successful,” she replied. 

Which did she love best, her sword or her 
banner? ” 

“ I love my banner forty times better,” she 
answered. She always bore it into battle, she 
said, instead of her sword, to avoid killing any 
one. “ And I never killed any one,” she added. 

They sought to pr<tve she had superstitiously 
honored her standard. 

“ Which helped most — you the standard, or 
the standard you ? ” 

Be the victory through the standard or 
through me, it was all due to our Lord.” 

“ If another had borne it, would it have had 
as good fortune ? ” 

“Of that I know nothing; I leave it with 
our Lord.” 

“ Why was her standard carried at the coro 
nation at Rheims, rather than another ? ” 

“ It had been in the strife,” she said, “ and 
that was good reason it should have the honor.” 

“ Did she know she was to be wounded at 
Orleans ? ” 

“ I did know it ; but I told the king, never- 
theless, not to desist from action.” 


PEJ^CIVAVS STORY, 303 

And St. Catharine heartened her, she said, 
so that she rode on in spite of her wound. 

They asked her if she had dictated the let- 
ters of summons to the English, which seemed 
to them so intolerably insolent. 

She acknowledged them as essentially hers, 
and she added that within seven years Paris 
would be in the hands of her king, and the Eng- 
lish driven from France. 

This, let it anger them or not, she knew 
from revelation ; but the day and the hour she 
knew not. 

And as she prophesied, it came in the main 
to pass. 

They recurred to the visions. 

They asked her how she knew St. Michael and 
the angels from St. Margaret and St. Catharine ? 

By their voices,’’ she said, “ and because 
they told her.” 

They asked her details as to the forms. 

She would only say she saw the glorious 
faces, always the same, and a great light, and 
that the voice was “ beautiful, gentle, and hum- 
ble,” and spoke French. 

“Did not St. Margaret speak English?” 

“How could she?” was the frank reply. 
“ She was on the French side.” 

They asked if the saints had crowns and 
ear-rings 


304 


yOA// THE MAID. 


She did not know. 

“ Had St. Michael any clothes? ” 

'' Do you think God had not wherewith to 
clothe him ? ’’ 

“ Had he long hair? ” 

“ Why should they have cut it off ? ” 

The judges seemed smitten into childishness 
before the childlike wisdom of the Maid. 

There was but one explanation. 

She spoke of the things she had heard and 
seen. 

The sessions continued to be held even on 
Holy Thursday and on Easter Eve. 

Palm Sunday, with its processions — proces- 
sions to open the closed doors of the churches — 
brought no opening of sacred doors to her. The 
solemn silence of Good Friday brought no ces- 
sation to her of the taunts and derisions of her 
jailors. 

The joyous clash of Easter bells throughout 
the city brought her no hymns of triumph, or 
festive light, or sacred communion. 

It brought to her only a further and bitterer 
stage of the mournful way of the Cross in which 
she was called to follow our Lord. 

But, firm as she stood in all she believed 
right, the conflict began to tell on her health. 

Early in Holy Week she was struck down 
with fever. The Holy season so dear to her, 


PERCIVALS STORY. 


305 


which must have reminded her so bitterly of all 
she was exiled from, probably was more than 
she could bear. 

Her illness was serious, and brought her near 
death. Perhaps she would have been glad if 
death had come so, and opened the gates of 
God to her for ever. 

And yet I think not. She still hoped for 
rescue, for she did not think her work was done. 

Her enemies, however, began to fear she 
might be sent back to God in a way they had 
not meant ; and, accordingly, the Cardinal of 
Winchester and the Earl of Warwick sent her 
physicians. 

“ Take good care of her,” said the Earl, 
“ the king would not for anything in the world 
that she should die a natural death. The king 
holds her dear, for he bought her dear, and 
wills not that she should die save by the hands 
of justice, and that she should be burnt. Do all 
that is possible to cure her.” 

The physicians asked her from what she 
suffered. 

“ The Bishop of Beauvais sent me a carp, of 
which I ate,” she said, “ and perhaps that is the 
cause of my sickness.’’ 

Jean d’Estivet, the proctor, who proved 
himself hard-hearted in other ways, thinking 
she meant to accuse the bishop of poisonmg 


306 yOAJV THE MAID. 

her, attacked her furiously, and called her a low 
name. 

The physicians thought bleeding would re- 
lieve her; but the Earl of Warwick said they 
must take care, she was cunning, and might 
kill herself. 

However, she was bled, and was relieved, 
and recovering, when Jean d’Estivet came to see 
her again, and slandered and railed against her 
so violently that she fell into a fever again, and 
Lord Warwick had to admonish the proctor to 
treat her more gently. 

Before leaving the name of Jean d’Estivet, 
let me gather together the few instances that 
have reached me of some hearts being moved 
with generous impulses of justice and pity 
towards her, however hindered by fear. 

On her way to the tribunal the usher, Mas- 
sieu, touched by her devotion, allowed her often 
to kneel by the open door of a chapel in which 
the Holy Sacrament was reserved. 

Jean d’Estivet discovered this, and placed 
himself at the door between the Maid and the 
altar, and threatened the usher with imprison- 
ment in a dungeon without light if ever he per- 
mitted her this consolation again. 

But, nevertheless, the Maid was often allowed 
to kneel and pray still at the open door. 

And at the very council table beside her sat 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


307 


one who would willingly have befriended her 
if he had dared, a Dominican friar, Isambard de 
St. Pierre (who received her last confession, and 
sustained her at the last). When he detected 
any snare or peril in the questions, he would 
gently touch or push her to warn her, until the 
Bishop of Beauvais perceived it and threatened 
to throw him into the Seine if ever he so guarded 
her again. 

Now and then, also, the injustice of her 
judges raised a protest among the assessors 
themselves. 

Twice one of them told her she was not 
bound to reply to a question, in spite of the 
menaces of the bishop. 

At other times, won by the point and truth 
of her replies, a voice would be found honest 
enough to confess — 

“ Jeanne, thou sayest well.” 

And once, when an over-officious French ad- 
vocate of the English cause had asked her if 
she had ever been wjiere the English were 
killed? and she replied, “You speak mildly. 
Why would they not leave France, and return 
to their own country ? ” an English nobleman 
had the candor to declare — “ Verily, that is a 
good woman. If she were only English ! ” 

“ Did St. Catharine and St. Margaret hate 
the English? ” they asked her once. 


3o8 


yOAN THE MAID. 


She replied, in her simplicity, by a profound 
theological truth. 

“ They hate those whom our Lord hates, and 
love those whom he loves.” 

They had to give up trying to perplex her 
into saying her visions were delusions. 

They next tried to bewilder her by proving that 
her Voices were lying Voices, and had deceived 
her because she had failed and been taken captive. 

But she said they had often announced to 
her that she would be taken before St. John’s 
Day, Midsummer, that so it must be ; but she 
must take all in good part, willingly {en gr^). 
How deliverance would come she knew not ; the 
day and hour she knew not. She would not 
leave the prison without leave of God ; but if 
the prison door were open, she would consider 
God gave her leave, and would go. 

When first St. Catharine told her she would 
be taken, she said she had prayed to die when 
she was taken, without long travail of prison ; 
but the Voices said sh^must take all willingly, 
for so it must be. 

They then tried to prove that the Voices 
had directed her to do wrong things, and were 
therefore diabolical. 

They asked her if her Voices had not com- 
manded her to disobey her father and mother, 
and leave them, unpermitted ? 


PERCIVAL'S STOP Y, 


309 


But here, again, her truthfulness saved her. 
She made no attempt to excuse herself, but ad- 
mitted that her Voices had not commanded her 
to leave without telling her parents. They had 
left her free, and she had done it to avoid con- 
flict. But afterwards she had sent to ask their 
forgiveness. 

They could, indeed, extract no sign of dis- 
approval from her father and mother. They 
had sent to make inquiries at Domremy. They 
had made investigations of those who had been 
with her since her career began. But they were 
careful to bring none of the evidence thus ob- 
tained forward. Nothing but good could be 
found out concerning her. 

They had questioned her of her childhood, 
her youth, her play, her work, her devotion, her 
revelations, her faith, her home, and had only 
succeeded in bringing out her goodness, and 
truth and piety. 

Now, therefore, they changed their tactics, 
and narrowed the attack to a point where it 
could not fail. Henceforth the whole force was 
directed against the masculine dress, and to the 
command of the Church— by which they meant 
their own tribunal — that she should lay it aside. 
Divines had sanctioned it, and good and noble 
women had approved of it. But the fact was 
undeniable ; nor, believing it to be her duty and 


310 


yOAN THE MAID, 


necessary under her circumstances, would she 
lay it aside. By this track, therefore, her con- 
demnation was secure. 

They asked her if she would submit to the 
Church. 

The first point to decide was, what was the 
Church to which she was to submit ? 

“ What is the Church? ” she asked. “What 
did they mean by it ? ” 

They said it was the Pope, the prelates, and 
all those who preside in the Church Militant. 

She said she would willingly submit to the 
Pope, and she demanded to be sent to him ; but 
she would not submit to her enemies, and in 
particular to the Bishop of Beauvais, “ Because,” 
she said to him, “you are my capital enemy.” 

As to the Church, when first they asked her 
whether she would submit to the Church Tri- 
umphant or the Church Militant, she said she 
did not know what they meant by these dis- 
tinctions, but she entreated to be allowed to 
go to mass. “ I love the Church,” she said, 
“ and would do all in my power for our Christian 
faith. It is not me they should hinder from 
going to church and to. mass ! ” 

They explained that the Church Triumphant 
meant the angels and saved souls ; the Church 
Militant, the Pope, the cardinals, the prelates, 
the clergy, and all good Christians and Catholics. 


f 


PERCIVAVS STOR Y. 3 1 1 

She said she had been sent by God, the 
Virgin Mary, and the blessed saints of paradise ; 
that as to the church on earth, she submitted to 
it in all that was not impossible. As to her acts 
and deeds, she had done them at the command- 
ment of God ; that for these she could not defer 
to any man in the world, only to our Lord ; 
that she submitted to the Church in all things, 
“ Messire,' the Almighty King, being first served, 
“ I commit myself to God,” she often said, ^Uind 
I love Him with all my heart ! ” 

“ I submit to our Lord, who sent me ; to 
our Lady, and all the blessed saints of paradise. 
It is my opinion that our Lord and the Church 
are One, and that we should make no difficulty. 
Why do you make any difficulty, as if they were 
not One?” 

Again they asked, would she submit to the 
Pope? 

They had previously tried to perplex her by 
asking which of the two Popes she thought the 
true, and she had baffled them by replying 
simply that in her opinion the true Pope must be 
at Rome. 

“ Certainly,” she replied, ‘‘ she would submit 
to the Pope.” 

“ Take me to the Pope, and I will answer all 
that I ought. Take me to him.” 

Poor child : vain prayer ! 


312 


;^OAN THE MAID, 


Isambard de St. Pierre advised her to appeal 
to the General Council, which had been sitting 
about a month at Basle. 

She asked what a General Council was ? Did 
it contain French and English — representatives 
of both sides 

She was told it did. 

“ Then certainly she would submit to it.*' 

Bishop Cauchon angrily silenced the debate. 
But the Maid’s appeal to the Pope and the 
General Council had been made and recorded, 
and was to be revived in her favor in long after 
years. 

They said she would be no better than a 
Saracen if she did not submit unreservedly to 
the Church, that is, to themselves. 

She said, — 

“ I was baptized a good Christian, and I 
shall die a good Christian.” 

“ And if she died,” she said, “ she trusted 
they would lay her in holy ground. But if not, 
even in that she could trust God I' 

Revering and obeying all that seemed to her 
authority, as far as she could, she yet never 
swerved from her supreme loyalty to truth, and 
to her Immortal King. 

The net, was, however, closing in fast around 
her; and there was no escape. In vain did a 
great clerk and church lawyer, Lohier, to whom 


PERCIVATS STORY. 


313 


Cauchon applied for confirmation when he came 
to Rouen, declare that the whole proceedings 
were illegal, null, and void. 

The bishop was furious. Lohier had to fly 
from Rouen at peril of his life ; and the trial, 
which had so long ceased to be anything but a 
chase to death, went on. And all the time the 
false confessor, L’Oyseleur, came to her from 
time to time, endeavoring to make her answers 
as perilous to herself as he could ; the only ap- 
parently kind voice allowed to be near her 
through all those months being thus the voice of 
a deliberate traitor. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


percival’s story. 

N the public interrogatory in February, 



followed the private interrogatory in per» 


son before solenneV doctors chosen by the 
bishop. Too many had been moved in her 
favor in the larger assembly, and therefore a few 
of the hardest were selected. To the private 
interrogatory succeeded the Accusation, the 
First Charitable Admonition, the Second Char- 
itable Admonition, the Sentence of the Univer- 
sity of Paris, the Sermon to the Maid, in prison, 
on the text of the sentence. 

The University of Paris condemned her on 
the twelve articles of accusation. 1st. Her ap^ 
paritions. These were false, seducing, inspired 
by evil spirits, namely, by Belial, Satan, and Be- 
hemoth. 2d. The sign to the king ; a’ lie. 3d. 
The visits of St. Catharine ; a belief rash and 
injurious to the faith. 4th. The predictions ; 
superstitious divination. 5th. The mans dress 
worn by commandment of God ; blasphemy. 6th. 
The letters: — these paint the woman, “ trai- 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


315 ' 

tress, blood-thirsty, blasphemous.” 7th. The 
departure for Chinon ; filial impiety. 8th. The 
spring from the tower at Beaurevoir; pusillan- 
imity leading to despair. 9th. The confidence of 
Jeanne in her salvation; presumption. loth 
That St, Catharine and St, Margaret do not speak 
English ; a blasphemy against St. Catharine and 
St. Margaret, and a violation of love of our 
neighbor, i ith. The honors she pays her saints ; 
idolatry, invocation of demons. 12th. Refusal 
to submit as to her deeds to the Churchf ; schism. 

But they could not shake her with interrog- 
atory, accusation, admonitions, or threats of 
torture. 

“ I have a good master, our Lord ; to Him I 
commit myself, a 7 td not to any other. If you 
made me say otherwise by torture, I would con- 
tradict it when I am set free. If I was judged, 
and saw the fire lighted, and the fagots kindled, 
and the executioner stirring them ; if I were in 
the fire, I could not say or sustain anything but 
what I have said during the trial, even to death.” 

So little had four months of baiting and 
insult, night and day, lowered her courage or 
shaken her faith. 

One other method must be tried. 

She must be made to abjure and lay aside 
her male attire, and then driven to resume it, 
and burnt as a relapsed heretic. 


316 yOAN THE MAID. 

Deliberately the Bishop of Beauvais set thia 
before him, and he accomplished it. 

She had resisted every effort to make her 
give up the protection of her military dress, and 
so throw doubt on her Voices and the Divine 
oiigin of her whole work. 

She had refused even to accept the joy of 
communicating at Easfer (to her the severest 
trial of all), at the price of wearing a woman’s 
dress, at least such a dress as they offered her, 
and so denying, as she thought, her mission, her 
God, and her saints. 

And so, the day after Pentecost, the two 
scaffolds were erected, and she was led forth to 
submit at last or die. 

From the early morning we had watched the 
preparations, Peter the Wright and I, for he had 
insisted on rejoining me, eager also to be near 
the noble c;*eature whose work, and whose char- 
acter, sent, as he believed her to be from God, 
to stop war and succor the crushed and bleed- 
ing peasantry of both lands, had lifted up his 
heart once more to believe in the Kingdom of 
God. 

The two scaffolds were erected in the cem* 
etery of the Abbey of St. Ouen, close to the 
beautiful south door. 

It was the 24th of May, the Maid’s own 
month, as I always felt it ; the month in a few 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 317 

days of which, two years before, she had saved 
Orleans and France. 

The delicate carving of the pinnacles and 
towers, exquisite and minute as the sprays of 
the green leaves, rose clear against the blue sky 
into the sunshine which was giving life to the 
world, on the green slopes at Danescombe, and 
in the forests of Domremy, bringing out the 
fresh leaves on the Ladies’ tree and floods of 
flowers in Jeanne’s own “Valley of many 
colors.” 

Perhaps that morning, knowing nothing, the 
Maid’s playmates — she was only nineteen, and 
some of her companions had not outgrown play 
— Mengette, Hauviette, Guillemette, wereweav- 
ing garlands under the beautiful beech-tree, 
“ the fair May.” 

Surely they would not fail, some of them, to 
place crowns of flowers on the image of the 
Mother and the Child, as Jeanne used to do, and 
they would pray in the little chapel and the 
church she loved ; and surely neither they nor 
the cur^, who so honored her, would, day or 
night, forget her in their prayers. 

Of her father and mother I scarcely dared 
to think. 

At Tours they had processions and Litanies 
to intercede for her when she was captured. 

Perhaps elsewhere ; but I know not. 


318 


yOAJV THE MAID. 


But I longed to send my voice forth in a 
great cry that morning, throughout France, to 
constrain the countless hearts that did surely 
beat with boundless gratitude for her, to pray 
for her to-day to wrestle for her, to pray without 
ceasing. 

For the combat had reached its crisis. And 
she was exhausted and faint at heart. 

And her enemies knew it, and drew their 
deadly net of persuasion and terror closer and 
closer. 

For they had resolved not only to burn her, 
but to ruin her good name for ever. Otherwise 
the spell would remain unbroken, and England 
might lose more by her death than by her life. 

This May morning, therefore, they gathered 
all their forces for a last assault. We did not 
know the details of the terrible battle till after- 
wards ; but the fact we knew too well. 

Early in the morning Jean Beaup^re, the most 
skilful of the divines, came to her prison to an- 
nounce to her the ordeal prepared for her. 

He told her that if she were a good Christian, 
she would commit herself in all things to our 
Holy Mother the Church, and he said afterwards 
that she had promised to do so. 

Poor, loyal, devout daughter of the Church, 
she had not only promised, she had done it over 
and over throughout the trial ! 


FERCIVALS STORY. 319 

Then came the arch-traitor, Nicolas I’Oyse- 
leur, the man who could talk to her of Dorn- 
r^my, who had confessed her, whom, at last, 
they had given to her as her counsel.” 

He went with her to the threshold of a little 
door which led to the scaffold, and exhorted her 
with all his might to do what they asked her ; 
assuring her that if she did no harm would hap- 
pen to her, but that she would be restored to 
the “ keeping of the Church,” by which she un- 
derstood that she would be delivered from the 
English prisons, the soldiers guarding her night 
and day, the exile from all holy offices in the 
Church, the continual, unspeakable insults and 
perils of the last six months. 

With these promises in her ears she was 
placed on the scaffold. On the scaffold opposite 
were Bishop Cauchon, the Cardinal of Winchester, 
and a number of doctors and priests, and in front 
of her the pulpit ; around, the soldiery she had 
defeated, and the unpitying crowd. 

A celebrated preacher, Guillaume Erard, 
preached the sermon, or rather the accusation. 

“ The branch cannot bear fruit except it 
abide in the vine.” 

The solemn echo of the familiar words woke 
me as if from a dream. They had fallen first on 
the hearts of eleven perplexed disciples, whose 
feet the Sacred Hands, so soon to be pierced, had 


320 


yOAN THE MAID. 


just washed, whose Cup of Life those hands had 
just filled first for them. 

The twelfth, the traitor, had already gone 
out into the night. 

“ The imitation of Christ ! ” The hearts of 
many were ringing with the words in that won- 
derful new book but just given to the Church. 

I looked at the noble young girl, solitary on 
the scaffold, weary and pale with the long im- 
prisonment, lifted on high, to be the target for a 
thousand darts of malice and falsehood. 

“ The imitation of Christ I ” Was this what 
it meant ? 

Occupied by the thought I scarcely heard 
the beginning of the sermon. When I began 
again to listen, the preacher was pouring every 
injurious epithet on the Maid — “ sorceress, her- 
etic, schismatic.” She stood silent, unresisting, 
alone, with every eye fixed on her. Until at 
last, carried away apparently by his indigna- 
tion, the preacher turned his eloquence against 
France. 

Oh France ! ” he cried, “ thou hast been 
sorely deluded. Thou hast ever been the most 
Christian of abodes ; and now Charles, who calls 
himself king and governor of thee, has clung as 
a heretic and schismatic (for such he is) to the 
words and deeds of a woman — vain, defamed, 
and full of all dishonor ; — and not he only, but 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


321 


all the clergy of his obedience and lordship, by 
whom, as she says, she was examined, and not 
reproved.” 

Then, turning towards Jeanne, and pointing 
to her with his hand, he said, — 

“ It is to thee, Jeanne, that I speak, and I 
tell thee that thy king is a heretic and a schis- 
matic.” 

Then once more, as we stood beneath the 
scaffold, the deep, soft, penetrating womanly 
voice thrilled through us — the voice we had 
heard on the bridge of Orleans, in the summons 
to surrender. At the attack on herself she had 
stood as unmoved as if the cruel words were 
only arrows and cannon-balls, and she once more 
planting a ladder against the forts. 

Bat when her king was attacked, her king 
who owed her his crown, and had not lifted a 
finger or offered a franc to save her, she spoke 
fearl issly, 

“ by my faith, sir,” she said aloud to the 
prea "her, “ with all reverence {r/verence £-ard/e)j 
I dare to say and swear to you, at peril of my 
life, that my king is the most noble Christian of 
all Chifstians, and that he loves the faith and 
the Church.” 

Make her keep silence,” said the preacher 
to the usher. 

Bi t Jeanne’s purpose was accomplished. 

14 * 


322 


yOAJV THE MAID, 


He attacked her king^ no more. 

She had succeeded ; she had warded off the 
blow from her king. 

Once more he exhorted her to submit to the 
Church. 

She said, — 

“ I will answer you. As to the submission 
to the Church, I have answered. Let all the 
things I have said and done be sent to Rome, to 
our Holy Father the Pope, to whom — but to God 
first — I commend myself ; and as to my sayings 
and doings, I have done them from God.” 

With that protest and appeal she ceased. 

But the preacher, taking the schedule of her 
crimes, summoned her to abjure them. 

She did not know what they meant by ab- 
juring. The usher, Massieu, explained to her. 

“ I refer to the Church Universal whether I 
should abjure or not,’’ she said. 

“ Thou abjurest at once,” said Erard the 
preacher, enraged at being baffled by such an 
appeal, “ or thou shalt be burnt alive to-day.” 

Nicolas rOyseleur, the traitor, who had not 
left her, said repeatedly, “ Do what I told you : 
resume the woman’s clothing.” 
r Every one pressed her, “ Will you cause your 
own death ? ” they cried. 

The judges said, “Jeanne, we have such pity 
on you ! ” 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


323 


She said she had done no evil, she believed in 
the twelve Articles of Faith and the Command- 
ments, and submitted to the Court of Rome. 

And as they still pressed on her — 

“You do yourselves much harm to seduce 
me,” she said. 

Until at length, bewildered and exhausted by 
threats, accusations, entreaties, lying promises, 
alone among a host of enemies, with one false 
friend, she said, “ I submit to the Church.” And 
she asked St. Michael to help her. 

Then, word by word, she read twice after 
Massieu, the usher, the formula of abjuration 
they had prepared. It was brief, and Massieu 
gave witness in after years that the abjuration 
they made her sign afterwards was quite dif- 
ferent from that which she had said. Doubtless, 
in her isolation, her perplexity, and her hope, 
she scarcely knew what she said. For it v\'as 
hope which had overcome her at last — the hope 
of escaping the unspeakable perils of her prison, 
and of once more being allowed to go to the 
Divine services, to hear mass, and partake of the 
Blessed Sacrament. 

They had told her that, if she abjured, she 
would be free, and at once taken from the keep- 
ing of her English jailors and placed in a prison 
of the Church, with women near her. 

The crowd also so fully believed that she had 


324 


JOAN THE MAID 


been admitted to mercy that the Eng ish sol- 
diery threw stones at the judges. The cnaplain 
of the Cardinal of Winchester called the Bishop 
of Beauvais a traitor. But the cardira knew 
better, and silenced the chaplain. 

Bishop Cauchon was indeed no traitor to the 
English. He admitted her to repentance, but “ for 
her wholesome penitence ” he condemned her to 
perpetual imprisonment,” “ bread of affliction 
and water of affliction,” to “weep for her faults.” 

Still Jeanne, and those around, fully expected 
she would be removed from the custody of the 
English. 

“ There, among you, men of the Church,” 
she said, “ take me to your prisons ; let me be no 
more in the hands of the English.” 

But the bishop said, — 

“ Take her again whence she was brought 
hitherT 

His treachery was certainly not to the Eng- 
lish. 

“ Fear not,” said one of the divines, “ we 
shall catch her again.” 

And so Jeanne was taken back to the castle 
to be entrapped into her relapse. 

On the very evening of that Thursday after 
Pentecost the judges visited Jeanne in prison, 
and persuaded her to resume a woman’s dress, 
as the Church demanded. 


J^K.^CIVAUS STORY. 


325 


The: i^oor^hild pioinked to obey in all things, 
The spting was broken. She had disobeyed her 
Voices, She had no strength to resist any 
more. 

From Thursday, May 24th, for two days no 
rumor reached us of the Maid. 

What outward ill-usage and torture she was 
subjected to we knew not. 

But one thing we knew. She had abjured. 
She had not been faithful to her Voices, that is, 
as she would think, to her God. 

The faithful, heavenly counsel which had never 
failed her since her childhood ; the glorious 
light, the holy gracious faces she had rejoiced 
to see, and had wept with longing to follow ; the 
“ beautiful and gentle voices ” which had been 
so sweet to her at Domr^my, at Chinon, at Poi- 
tiers, at Orleans, at Rheims, at Beaurevoir, even 
at Rouen ; in palaces, in prison ; by night and 
by day; which had told her to be a good child 
and to pray ; which had filled her with the 
great pity ” for France ; which had given her 
wisdom which great captains wondered at ; 
which had warned her when she would be 
wounded, and had heartened her to persevere 
through the pain ; which had tenderly dissuaded 
her from attempting to escape at Beaurevoir, and 
tenderly rebuked and consoled her when she re- 
pented ; which had called her “ daughter of 


326 


yOAN THE MAID. 


God,” and bidden her fear not nor shun her 
sufferings, and promised her Paradise ! She 
would feel she had been false to them at last ; 
and though she did not half know what her tor- 
mentors had made her say, that she had thrown 
a doubt and stain on all the glorious deeds to 
which her Voices had inspired her and France, 
on the mission for which her king had sent 
them. 

Bitter beyond thought, we knew, must be 
her isolation now. 

And we prayed for her, as we were able, night 
and day. 

But we need not have been so afraid of the 
pity of heaven failing her. 

Cruel as were the outrages of men, she w'as 
suffered to know very little of the darkness of 
the hidden Face of God. 

On Sunday the tidings ran like wildfire 
through the city that the Maid had “relapsed 
which meant that she had insisted on resuming 
the man’s dress. Insisted^' poor child! with 
three jailors in her cell night and day, and two 
at the door outside 1 

The bishop and the vice-inquisitor and seven 
or eight doctors went at once to the prison to 
see if the report were true. 

So well had they acted their part as regards 
the English soldiery that they were threatened 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 12? 

and pelted as if they meant to interfere on the 
Maid’s behalf. 

They asked her why she had broken her oath 
and resumed the forbidden dress. 

She said she had never intended to take such 
an oath, and that the dress was the only one fit 
for her to wear in such a prison. 

They had broken their promise to her, she 
said, of letting her go to Mass, and receive her 
Saviour, and of taking off her fetters. 

“ I had rather die,” she said, ^‘than to be so 
chained. But if they will let me go to mass and 
take off my irons, if they will put me in a merci- 
ful prison and let me have a woman with me, I 
will be good and do what the Church wills.” 

The shameful truth was known to all, let the 
judges pretend not to see it as they would. 

During those terrible days no basest insult 
had been spared her. 

The forbidden dress meant death — death by 
fire, she knew. She had chosen death rather 
than dishonor. 

She also told the usher Massieu that in the 
morning they had absolutely refused to give her 
the woman’s dress she asked for, and compelled 
her to take the forbidden clothes. 

Thenceforth the judgment of earth was lit- 
tle to her. Her only grief was that she had 
grieved her heavenly friends. 


$28 


yOA// THE MAID, 


Had she heard her Voices, they asked, since 
the abjuration on Thursday? 

She had; and “ God,” she «iaid, “has made 
known to me by St. Catharine and St. Margaret 
their great pity for the treason to which I con- 
sented in making an abjuration that I might 
save my life : that I was ruining my soul to save 
my life.” 

She said her Voices had told her before the 
fatal Thursday what she would do on that day ; 
on the scaffold they had told her to answer the 
preacher boldly, that false preacher who had 
accused her of doing things she had never done. 

And then with a strange echo of Divine 
words probably unknown to her, she added : “ If 
I said God had not sent me I should be lost ; 
the truth is^ God has sent me^ 

And she lamented having been false to her 
Voices; though, indeed, she had never meant to 
deny them. 

What she had said falsely was from fear of 
the fire and the prison. She had rather die than 
remain in that prison. 

But now this fear was over ; she had it no 
more. She knew to what this confession led 
her, and she would revoke nothing “ except at 
the good pleasure of God.” 

Bishop Cauchon’s purpose was gained. 

The Maid had undoubtedly relapsed. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


329 


Some of the assessors, Pierre Morice and 
Isambard de St. Pierre, were grieved ; but none, 
alas, though knowing the whole story, had cour- 
age to say a word to save her. 

The Bishop of Beauvais triumphed. 

Meeting the Earl of Warwick and other Eng 
lishmen as he went out, he said laughing, in 
English : 

“ Farewell, farewell. Be of good cheer. It 
is done.*' 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


percival’s story. 

I T WAS DONE. 

On Wednesday, the 30th of May, two friars, 
Brother Martin I’Advenu and Brother Jean Tout 
Mouill^, went to the Maid in person to prepare 
her for death. 

As Brother Jean told afterwards, L’Advenu 
told the poor girl that she was to die that very 
day, and when she heard the hard and cruel 
death that was so near she began to cry pit- 
eously and to tear her hair : 

‘‘Alas!’' she said, “do they treat me so 
horribly and cruelly ? And must it be that my 
body, pure and sound {net en entier), and never 
sullied, must to-day be consumed and reduced 
to ashes ? Ah 1 I had rather be beheaded seven 
times than thus burnt alive. Alas! If they had 
taken me to the ecclesiastical prison, to which I 
had submitted, and let me be guarded by 
churchmen, and not by my foes and adversaries, 
it would never have happened to me. I appeal 
to God, the great Judge, against the wrongs and 
outrages done to me.” 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


331 


Once more the Bishop of Beauvais dared to 
come and see her. 

She met him with a sentence which he 
surely would not easily forget. 

“ Bishop, 1 die through youi' 

And she appealed from him to God. 

The bishop had one more work of diabolical 
malice to accomplish. 

The man’s dress was resumed, the relapse 
was assured. 

The only further thing to obtain was to sully 
her memory by a second abjuration. 

To this end, in that hour of agony, he assailed 
her with the argument with which the devil had 
probably often assailed her before, that her 
Voices had deceived her with false promises and 
now abandoned her to die. 

Her enemies asserted that he succeeded and 
that she promised to abjure again on the scaffold. 

But none of them dared make the attempt to 
persuade her when the last hour came. There 
is no evidence of this second private abjuration 
but that of her worst enemies, and I disbelieve 
it utterly. 

Whether, indeed, the powers of darkness were 
suffered to shadow her last moments with doubts 
of her Voices I know not. 

But the utmost her enemies could do, by 
their own confession, was to drive her from the 


332 


yOAN THE MAID. 


outworks into the Citadel, from her beloved 
saints to God. The worst they dared declare 
concerning the result of that last interview was 
that she said, I believe in God alone^ and not in 
those Voices. They have deceived me.” 

Poor Maid ! Whatever she said, the pitiful 
saints would not misjudge her. And once at 
home with God, she would soon find her broth- 
ers and sisters of Paradise again. 

“ Master Pierre,” they say she asked of Doct. 
Pierre Morice, ‘‘ where shall I be this evening?” 

And he, knowing well by the evidence of all 
the cruel interrogations of these months what 
was her faith and life, answered, 

“ Have you not good hope in God 
Ah, yes,” she said, “ and by the grace of 
God I shall be in Paradise.” 

And by their own account her persecutors 
could not contradict her. 

The Bishop of Beauvais departed from her 
at last. 

She was left alone with Brother Martin I’Ad- 
venu. She confessed and asked for the com- 
munion. 

The communion to one about to be publicly 
excommunicated ! 

Brother Martin sent usher Massieu to tell the 
bishop she had confessed, and asked for the 
Eucharist. 


PERCIVAHS STORY. 


333 


The bishop consulted with several divines, 
and replied to Massieu, “ Go and tell Brother 
Martin to give her the Eucharist and all she may 
ask.” So discriminating and politic was Bishop 
Cauchon’s hatred ! Her public condemnation and 
calumniation secured, he knew nothing against 
her which should hinder her receiving the sacred 
Body of the Lord, and going forth publicly ex- 
communicated on earth, yet nevertheless really 
absolved and in sacramental union with the Son 
of God to meet Him. 

And so they brought her the Eucharist. 

With a strange, unintended assimilation of 
the Master to the disciple, they brought the 
sacred Host without pomp, without light, with- 
out escort, without surplice, without stole, laid 
humbly on the paten, covered only with the 
linen of the chalice. It was as if they would re- 
call in outward form the parted garments, and 
the shame, and the cross, and associate thus her 
heavenly King, even visibly with the destitu- 
tion and humiliation of His poor forsaken child. 

Brother Martin was much aggrieved at this 
irreverence. He sent for a light and a stole. 
But one thing he could never describe, and that 
was “ the fervent piety of the Maid, the devotion 
and the great flood of tears with which she re- 
ceived her Saviour.” 

An alabaster-box was broken there, full of 


.334 


yCAA" THE MAID. 


ointment very precious, which filled all the 
house ” with perfume not distilled on earth. 

And so, without longer interval, from the 
tearful joy of penitence and faith and unuttera- 
ble love, with the Saviour in her heart, they led 
her forth to die, lifted up on a little cart, with a 
mitre on her head, on which could be read the 
words, “ heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater. 

Thus it was that for the last time the Maid 
came before our eyes. 

Around her seven or eight hundred soldiers; 
close to her, the usher Massieu and her confessor, 
Brother Martin I’Advenu. 

She wept as she went. She commended her- 
self humbly to God and the saints. And many 
of the people wept with her. 

The tide was turning already. 

And bitterer than death was its sudden turn- 
ing in one heart. 

There was an attempt made to break through 
the guard, fiercely repelled. 

It was Nicolas I’Oyseleur ! the traitor who 
had deceived her with false professions to the 
last ; who when he saw them leading her away 
to die was seized with irresistible remorse, and 
rushed towards the little cart to ask her for- 
giveness. 

But the English drove him furiously away, 
and called him “ traitor,” a word which must 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 33 $ 

have had to him a significance and weight far 
more terrible than they knew. 

They would have killed him, but for the in- 
terference of the Earl of Warwick ; and the Earl 
would not answer for his life if he remained in 
Rouen. 

This day there were three scaffolds ; one for 
the judges, one for the prelates and nobles, and 
one of stone for the Maid. These were erected 
in the old market-place in front of the cathedral. 

The sermon was preached by Maitre Nicole 
Midii. The text was, “ If one member suffer, 
all the members suffer with it a truth she had 
indeed proved by suffering with all. 

“ Obstinate, incorrigible, heretic, and re- 
lapsed ; excommunicated from the body of the 
Church ” (though fresh from communion with 
the Church’s Lord), “ Go in peace,” echoed 
through that great open space, and from the 
towers of the great church. “ The Church can 
defend thee no more : she 'delivers thee to the 
secular arm.” 

Before her, lifted on the scaffold, was the 
stake, that all might see. She knelt down 
before it, and made her lamentations and her 
prayers. 

True to herself, to the Divine likeness of 
Love, to the last she made no defence of her- 
self; she thought only of defending her king. 


336 


;^OAAr THE MAID. 


‘ The king,” she protested, “ was answerable for 
none of her acts. Never had he induced her to 
do anything she had done, good or evil.” 

She thought in her loyal humility she was 
defending him against being included in her con- 
demnation. She was, in truth, proclaiming the 
glorious solitude of her heroism. 

Then turning to the multitude, she en- 
treated them humbly, whether of her party or 
the other, to forgive her and to pray for her, 
and that every priest present would give her the 
alms of a mass. She herself forgave all and each 
the wrong that had been done her. 

The English judges were, for the moment, 
moved to the heart. 

There were few who did not weep. 

Apostate as she was declared to be, she 
longed only to die with the image of her Sa- 
viour in her sight. 

She asked the usher, Massieu, to fetch her 
a cross. Thank God, it was given to one Eng- 
lishman to render her this last service ! 

One of our own countrymen broke his staff and 
made her a cross from it. 

She took it from his hand, and placed it de- 
voutly on her breast. 

But she also begged Brother Isambard de la 
Pierre to fetch her a cross from the neighboring 
church, “ to hold it,” she said, “ lifted up straight 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


337 


before her eyes, through the last steps of death, 
that the cross on which God had hung might be 
as long as she lived continually before her 
eyes.” 

And when he brought it she covered it with 
kisses and with tears, calling on God, St. Mi- 
chael, and St. Catharine, and all the saints. 

But the scene grew too long for the patience 
of her enemies. 

As Massieu continued to exhort her, some 
captains cried out, — 

“ How now, priest ! would you have us 
dine here ? ” 

From some unexplained reason, remorse or 
haste, the Bishop of Beauvais never pronounced 
her final sentence. 

Did he find it difficult to excommunicate her 
to whom a few hours before, by the counsel of 
the Doctors, he had sent the Eucharist? 

However that might be, he only said to the 
executioner, 

“ Go on — go on ; do thy duty.” 

The fire was kindled. 

She wept for her murderers. 

‘‘Rouen! Rouen!” she said, “ must I die 
here? Must thou be my dwelling place? Ah, 
Rouen, I have much fear that thou wilt suffer 
for my death.” 

All doubt and fear for herself and her mission 
15 


338 


yOAN THE MAID. 


were gone. She was free, once more, for her 
old work of saving and succoring. 

And a fear came over many of the crowd : 
fear and great pity, and there was much 
weeping. 

It was broken by a feeble attempt at mock- 
ing laughter, but that soon died away. 

The English wept. The Cardinal of Win- 
chester, it was said, wept ; and the Bishop of 
Beauvais. 

The stake was lifted high, and the flame 
took long in reaching it. 

Brother Martin was holding up the great 
cross before her, as she had asked. 

Forgetting herself, as was her wont, when 
she saw the flames come near him, she took 
leave of him, and bade him go farther off, only 
asking that he would lift up the cross on high 
that she might see. 

He went a little way off, but still m.ar 
enough to hear her say to the last, in the fire, 
that her Voices were of God, and that all she had 
done she had done by the commandment of 
God, that she did not believe she had been de- 
ceived by her Voices, and that the revelations 
she had received had been from God. 

“ Fille de Dieu ! (child of God) go on ; go im. 
Be not dismayed at thy martyrdom. Thou Srialt 
■'ome at last to the Paradise of God.'^ The f >11 


PERCIVAL'S STORY. 339 

significance of these words was revealed to her 
at last. 

And so she continued breathing dear and 
holy names, — and above all the name of Jesus. 

Once more, with the clear, soft voice which 
had inspired so many to victory, and touched 
so many to purity and mercy, she uttered the 
blessed name of “ Jesus.'* 

And then her head sank, and her spirit went 
to Him. 

Amid the sobbings and the silence I heard 
one English voice moan — 

‘‘ We are lost ! we have killed a saint." 

And two of her judges are said to have ex- 
claimed, with bitter tears, “ Would that my soul 
were where I believe the soul of that wo- 
man is." 

The cross was still lifted up before her in the 
friar's hands. 

But she had awakened to the sight of an- 
other great Multitude and another Judge. 

And so at last, they sent her back to God. 
‘ The imitation of Christ I The imitation of 
Christ ! ” 

The words rang in my heart. 

Surely it was there. 

Not that she had thought so much of im- 
itating Him, and being like Him. But being 
made like Him^ she had thought, like Him, sim. 


340 JOAN THE MAID. 

ply of succoring the suffering and saving the 
lost. 

For God himself had stamped the likeness 
of the Saviour in her heart. 

We did not linger many days in Rouen. 

While she was being hunted to death and 
dying, and we might aid her by our poor prayers, 
it was worth while to stay. 

And when at last the noble, gentle spirit had 
passed away, for a time heaven seemed open, 
and the silence she had left on earth seemed 
as the silence of hushed expectation outside the 
closed gate of a temple which might soon open 
again. 

But when she was gone a terrible emptiness 
fell on the city, and indeed bn the world in 
which that brave and l^ing heart had been 
reduced to air and ashes. 

Moreover, the petty voices of vengeance and 
ambition which had died around her ashes began 
to revive. 

The cruel triumph had to be made use of. The 
calumny, sealed by her burning, had to be pro- 
claimed and spread, that the tide of conquest 
she had turned might flow back in pillage and 
ravage over France. 

And this we would not linger to see. 

It was said her old father died a few days 
after her execution, of grief, and that one of the 


PERCIVAL'S STOR Y. 34 i 

brothers who had been with her through her 
victorious warfare did not long survive. 

It was said also afterwards that death in vari- 
ous sudden and terrible forms pursued those most 
concerned in her death. This, I know not surely ; 
nor do I reck much whether it was so or not. 

I know the shadow of her death must have 
been on their consciences and hearts as long as 
heart and conscience had life left in them. 

And the “ sting of death ” is not in the mode 
or the moment of dying, but in the sin which un- 
forgiven, makes life bitter, and death but a be- 
ginning of a bitterer consciousness of lost life. 

She prayed for forgiveness from all. 

She gave her forgiveness to all who had 
wronged her. 

The sweetest vengeance for her, as for the 
Master, would be vengeance of the cross, 
“ Father, forgive them.” 

And it may be, it may be, that even with the 
traitor, the vain despair which made him at last 
rush and struggle, at peril of his life, to break 
through her guard, and again entreat her for- 
giveness, was the beginning of an agony of peni- 
tence, of the scorching of the “ coals of fire " 
which, shrivelling up the evil entwined with his 
inmost soul, might at last set it free, a feeble 
and baby soul, indeed, yet fit to take some low- 
est place in the kingdom of the redeemed. 


CHAPTER XIX. 
percival’s story. 

P ETER THE WRIGHT fell into almost 
utter silence during those last days at 
Rouen. 

It was only on the second day of our home 
voyage to England that he began to look up 
and speak again ; and then, as we sat alone on a 
very calm evening, just in sight of the white 
cliffs, he brushed away the tears from his rugged 
brown cheeks, and looked up at me. 

“ She has ‘ sent us back,’ ” he said, with 
something of a smile. “ She will ‘ send us all 
back,’ as she said, ‘ to our little coast, our own 
little fold,’ Master Percival. Her work is done. 
We shall no more be suffered to tear each other 
in pieces, we two Christian nations, peasant and 
prince, and priest, like two evil beasts, one hun- 
dred years after another; God will give us to do 
better work with our little fold, Master Percival. 
I see it all now. But I have passed through a 
horror of great darkness. Once more my foolish 
soul was at strife with the Almighty, and I cried 
out, ‘ Why ? ’ and ‘ Woe ! ’ 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


343 


I had thought the Kingdom was coming. 
And now, again, all was once more without form 
and void, and darkness on the face of the 
deep. 

“ But last night I had a dream or vision. 

“ I saw the Maid, even as some said they saw 
a white dove flying from the stake as she bowed 
her head and died. 

She herself, as a dovelike saint, swift and 
glad, darted homeward through the air to God. 

“And I heard a sound of welcome, such as 
when the rescued people thronged around her 
first at Orleans. 

“ But she, as then, was pressing onwards and 
upwards, through them all to God. 

“ And, then a hush and a silence, and some- 
thing I could not utter, joy such as on earth we 
have no speech for but tears, and there, they say, 
tears are wiped away. 

“ ‘ Welcome ! welcome home ! ’ 

“ The Gospel tells of such joy. 

“ ^ His father ran and fell on his neck^ and 
kissed htm^ 

“ ‘ Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord? 

“ It was something of those two joys to- 
gether. 

“ The joy of the forgiven child on the fath- 
er’s heart ! Sweet and true as she was, yet even 
she needed that ; and had it. 


344 


yOAN THE MAID. 


The joy of being like Him, and sharing His 
joy of saving. 

“ She has known that on earth ; she shall 
know it forever. 

“A rapture of silence enfolded all my heart, 
like a child on its mother’s breast. How long I 
know not. 

“And then it was, as if once more she shone 
out from the light of a multitude of shining 
ones, herself, with something like her old lily 
banner, and the shining armor, such as I had 
seen her bear at the altar at Rheims, as if kneel- 
ing at the feet of a Crowned King, but not King 
Charles ; and she murmured, as of old — 

“ * Messire, my King! Jesus!’ 

“ And then I woke. 

“ But the darkness was gone from my heart. 

“Through her life God revealed to me the 
Kingdom. Through her life he bound up the 
blessed Bible with our poor lives in France and 
England to-day. 

“Through her death He has shown me the 
King, her King and ours ; and that the King- 
dom we see is but a beginning of the Kingdom 
where the multitudes are, where He is and 
reigns.' 

• • • • • • ■ 

And so, at last, we came back to the dear 
familiar places, and were welcomed. 


PEUCIVAVS STORY. 


345 


And through the quiet years the joy was 
given me of seeing Owen with Cecilie, among 
their boys and girls, he spending himself joyfully 
for others in all holy natural relationships, and 
enriched as he so spent. 

The poor French girl Peter had brought 
home went patiently for a time about her daily 
tasks, but drooped slowly, and at last died with 
the same sacred Name on her lips which had 
breathed from the dying lips of the Maid. 

Unfathomable name! Satisfying all, yet 
meaning such infinitely various depths to each I 

Father Adam found great solace in the 
great book of the Consolation or Imitation of 
Christ. 

He said it spoke out the depths of the sad- 
ness of the times, and must suiely have been 
written by one, whoever he might be, who had 
comprehended the times and struggled hard to 
mend them, and ha^ seen many things fail, had 
seen all fail, perhaps, but Him who never fails. 

Night and day the sacred, strong words of 
communion with the Almighty Friend, of pa- 
tient bearing of the cross, were on his lips. 

‘‘ Bear the cross willingly, and it in turn 
shall bear thee.” 

“Turn thyself inward, outward, upward, 
downward ; everywhere thou shalt find the 
cross.” 


15 * 


34 ^ 


JOAN THE MAID. 


** Love finds burdens no burdens/* 

And almost the last words I heard him 
speak were from the same book: 

“ Waif, wait ; I will come and cure thee I' 

And so he died, and left me the precious 
legacy of the souls to whom he had ministered 
so faithfully. 

But to me Peter’s Book was more than any- 
thing else, as, no doubt, it was in itself to Father 
Adam. Only that to him as to so many, the 
leaves of healing came wrapped up in the heart 
of the holy brother to whom it was given to 
write the Imitation. 

In that Divine Book shone, ever before me 
and Elaine, who shared my life, not renunciation, 
nor bearing the cross, nor even being like the 
Crucified, but the Christ Himself ; and the world 
He loved and came to save, in all its needs, and 
sores, and sins, and possibilities of redemption. 

The Saviour, and the World He loved and 
came to save. 

And before us, once close to us in the race, 
yet now so high above us, the Maid who in her 
brief life had, it seemed to us, grown so like the 
Saviour, in living to save. 


CHAPTER XX. 


percival’s story. 

S o the years passed on, and the blessed life of 
taking care of others was given, as far as we 
could embrace it, to my sister Elaine and to me, 
in the quiet valleys on the edge of the wild 
moorland, or by the Western Sea of our youth. 
So passed five-and-twenty years. 

The Maid’s work was, indeed, in a great 
measure done : her prophecy fulfilled. 

England was “ sent back to her own fold ” 
— certainly, as yet, no peaceful fold — torn and 
ravaged with the cruel wars of the Roses ; yet 
still was she delivered from the great crime of 
pouring forth her sons to pillage and ravage 
France. 

In 1449 Rouen and Normandy were lost to 
us; in 1452 and 1453 Bordeaux and all Queen 
Eleanor’s old inheritance of Guyenne. 

The calumnies concerning the Maid have 
not, indeed, yet died away. All lies are mortal, 
I know, and death-stricken, for He who is Life 
and Truth lives and reigns. But in this thick 
atmosphere of earth some lies take long to die. 


348 


^OAN THE MAID. 


“ Sorceress, idolatress, apostate,” the false- 
hoods of the Bishop of Beauvais and the Univer- 
sity of Paris still make their way among us in 
England. 

But in France, at least, this wrong has been 
repaired. 

I knew it was to be done, and I went across 
the seas to hear and see. 

The Maid’s father had been long dead, but 
her mother, Isabelle Rom^e, who “ had taught 
her’’ all she knew of religion — the Apostle’s 
Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary— still 
lived, capable, like her child, of nourishing an 
unquenchable purpose in silence, until the 
hour for speech came. Patient and resolute, she 
made no cries of vain lamentation, but never 
rested until her child’s name and fame were 
cleared. 

King Charles remitted forever the taxes of 
her village. That was something. 

He also ennobled the whole family, with an 
especial patent of nobility, extending to the 
daughters of the house, and whomsoever they 
married. 

But that was not enough. 

Not to be ennobled, but to be acquitted of 
the false sentence ; to be declared good, and 
pure and true, was what Isabelle Rom^e had set 
her heart on for her child. 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 


349 


Widowed and poor, she had made several 
costly and fruitless journeys to Orleans and the 
Court to stir up the authorities there to do jus- 
tice to the memory of the Maid. 

For a time Orleans was deluded and misled 
by the appearance of a false Jeanne, with some 
external resemblance to her, who deceived the 
citizens for some years into giving her a pension. 

But this delusion passed away, and France 
was entirely quit of the English domination. 

Bitter must the long delays of those years 
have been to the bereaved mother. 

But she never gave up hope or effort. 

She spent a great part of her little property 
in the sacred task. 

The city of Orleans gave her a pension equiv- 
alent to a hundred a year. She only used it to 
extend and repeat her appeals for justice. 

At length, when Rouen had fallen, the king, 
Charles — Joan’s own king — woke up to a late 
determination to restore the memory of the 
Maid, who had saved his kingdom, given him his 
crown, and to the last, at the stake, had died 
defending his name. 

The shadow which rested on her name 
rested also on the crown and dominion she had 
restored, and perhaps, at last he felt, on the 
character of the sovereign who might have 
saved her and had not. And so, at length, the 


350 


yOAN THE MAID. 


petitions of the devoted peasant mother were 
listened to, and on the 15th of February, 1450, 
letters patent were issued by the Crown, con- 
stituting a commission to inquire and report how 
Jeanne had been tried and iniquitously and 
cruelly put to death. 

The commissioner held the inquiry at Rouen. 
The Cardinal-Delegate, D’Estouteville, and Jean 
Brehan, one of the inquisitors of France, were 
chosen for the work. 

There were two great difficulties in the way. 

The prosecution had been carried on by 
the Inquisition, and the sentence pronounced 
by the ecclesiastical authorities. 

And the Cardinal D’Estouteville had just 
been sent to negotiate a reconciliation between 
France and England, in order to turn the forces 
of both kingdoms against the Turks. 

The cause therefore required skillful steering, 
in order to avoid offending England and impugn- 
ing the authority of the Church. 

The Cardinal left the matter to Jean Brehan. 

The English difficulty was avoided by mak- 
ing the suit private, not as if instituted by the 
French king, but by the family of the Maid, her 
mother, her brother, and her sister. 

The ecclesiastical objection was waived by 
Jean Brehan, the inquisitor, himself. He zeal- 
ously pursued the investigation, and concluded 


PERCIVAVS STORY, 


351 


that the former judgment was invalid by reason 
of mistake, that the verdict was against the evi- 
dence, and he was only allowing at last the ap- 
peal to the Pope, which had been unjustly denied 
to Jeanne on her trial. ^ 

The Pope, CalixtusII., on the nth of June, 
1455, received the petition of the mother and 
the two brothers of the Maid, and by a rescript 
addressed to the Archbishop of Rheims, (the 
archbishop who had grudged her the “ fine 
clothes ’■ had long since died), the Bishops of 
Paris and Coutances, he appointed these pre- 
lates, with the aid of the inquisitor, to revise the 
sentence. 

The Commission recited that “ a certain per- 
son named Jean d’Estivet (the proctor who had 
called Joan bad names when she was ill, and had 
stood between her and the sacrament at the 
chapel door), suborned by persons jealous of the 
Maid and her family, had given false witness 
against her concerning heresy, and had refused 
her appeal to the Holy See." 

The new trial was to be opened with great 
solemnity in the Cathedral of Notre Dame at 
Paris. 

In the quiet valleys near Danescombe the 
news reached me, and I determined to go and 
see this great wrong set right, as far as it could 
be done on earth. 


352 


yOJJV THE MAID. 


Nothing could dissuade Peter the Wright, 
old as he was, from going with me. 

“ The steps of the Almighty are slow,^’ he 
said, and it is not often given in a lifetime to 
see the names of the saints cleared by those 
who slew them, or let them die.” 

And so we journeyed once more to France, 
the France England had lost, and, as I believe, 
found her gain in losing ; through the fields of 
Normandy, where we had gone, reluctantly, sol- 
diers of a conquering army, we went once more, 
1 a priest and Peter a bowed old man. My 
French speech did us good service. And we 
stood, for the first time, within N6tre Dame of 
Paris. 

To us, whose last memory in France had 
been the condemnation and burning of the 
Maid at Rouen, it was, as Peter said, like a fore- 
taste of the Judgment Day to be there. 

Outside, the people of Paris were gathered 
in throngs, deeply moved. 

Within, in solemn array, in the choir, sat the 
Archbishop of Rheims, the prelates, and the 
commissioners. 

And through the great west door came the 
procession. Men of rank and note, many and 
honorable, came at last to do honor to the mem- 
ory of the Maid. 

But before them all came Isabelle Rom^e, the 


FERCIVAL'S STORY. 


353 


venerable mother of the Maid, a stately woman 
sixty-seven years of age, walking between her 
two sons Jean and Pierre, one of whom had 
fought bravely beside his sister in her campaigns. 

The venerable mother spoke, and said with a 
voice full and clear, though tremulous with emo- 
tion, “Jeanne was my lawful child. I trained 
her according to her age and position, in the 
fear of God, and the instructions of the Church. 
Although she never harbored a thought against 
the Faith, yet her enemies, to the injury of the 
king, arraigned her on a trial in matters of reli- 
gion. They falsely imputed to her crimes, and 
paying no attention to her denial, nor to her 
appeal, they have crowned with infamy herself 
and her relations.” 

And so she ceased. 

To us who remembered the marvellous career 
of victory, the long-drawn injustice of the prose- 
cution, and the agony, and the nobleness of her 
cruel death, it was a statement of most touching 
moderation. 

H ow the mother’s heart must have burned 
beneath the restrained and temperate words ! 

But it meant the full clearing of that holy 
memory, and it accomplished its end. 

Among the crowd once more I saw those 
true brown eyes which I had seen last, wet with 


354 


THE MAID, 


tears in the little Chapel of Notre Dame de 
Bourlaimont at Domremy. 

They were full of tears again, but the beauti- 
ful grave face, as childlike in its simplicity as 
ever, was radiant with sympathy as she gazed 
on the face of the noble peasant mother, and 
listened to the words so many had thirsted so 
long to hear. 

And thus I saw once more the child Bea- 
trice, with her husband, Raymond de Mailly, and 
two noble boys of her own ; and as she turned 
away to weep unrestrained, her eyes met mine. 

I saw her again that evening among her chil- 
dren, as true, as tender, as full of trust as ever, 
with all the forlorn look gone from the lovely, 
serious face. 

“ What moments there are even in this life !’* 
she said. “ And yet the best moments are only 
like unveilings of the world of light beyond, in 
the world she lives in forever, our Jeanne La 
Pucelle.” 

From Beatrice I learned the end, for we 
could not long remain in France, and the process 
of reversing the sentence and re-establishing the 
innocence of the Maid lasted two years. 

The accusers were summoned to Rouen. 
But no accuser ever appeared. 

Some could not. The judge, Bishop Cau- 
chon, had died long since, and his represen^a- 


PERCIVAL'S STORY, 355 

tives declined to take the resp onsibility on them- 
selves. 

Four judicial inquiries were opened ; at Paris, 
at Rouen, at Orleans where forty-one witnesses ap- 
peared, and at Toul for her own village of Dom- 
r^my, where thirty-four witnesses were gathered. 

Altogether, there were a hundred and twenty 
witnesses and a hundred and forty-two distinct 
depositions were taken down. 

Beautiful lights shone back on the childhood 
of the Maid from the testimony of the peasants 
who had lived close to her, of the old men and 
women who had known her from her babyhood, 
of her playfellows who were still living, of ah 
who had known her at Domr^my. 

And then came the testimonies of great cap- 
tains, of soldiers who had fought beside her at 
sieges and on battle-fields; Dunois ; the Duke 
d’Alengon ; Louis de Contes, her page ; D’Aulon, 
her esquire ; and Pasquerel, her chaplain and 
confessor. 

Finally came the testimony of those who had 
watched her in prison and seen her at the stake, 
Isambard de St. Pierre, Martin TAdvenu, who 
had held up the cross before her dying eyes ; 
some even of the assessors and the officers of the 
court — the scribe Manchon, the usher Massieu ; 
all recalling some trait of the noble being they 
had watched so long. 


356 


JOAN THE MAID. 


The new trial was concluded at Rouen in 
June, 1456, just a quarter of a century after her 
death. 

The twelve articles, sanctioned by the Uni- 
versity of Paris, the only basis of her sentence, 
were pronounced false and calumnious, and were 
torn from the records and rent in pieces. 

The sentence was pronounced null by rea- 
son of the incompetency of the Court, and the 
military interference with the Assessors. Jeanne 
w'as declared not to have “ relapsed,” but to 
have submitted herself to the judgment of the 
Church. As to her apparitions and revelations 
“ God only could pronounce.” As to her dress, 
they concluded that the enterprise she under- 
took rendered it absolutely necessary to modesty 
and safety. 

On the 7th of July, after several days’ careful 
investigation of the points of law in the Great 
Hall of the Archepiscopal Palace of Rouen, in 
the presence of the brothers of the Maid, and of 
the public, the final sentence was pronounced. 
It was declared that the articles against her 
were falsely and fraudulently compiled, that the 
pretended abjuration was obtained by a shame- 
ful trick and was false ; that the trial, the abju- 
ration, and the two judgments against her were 
false, fraudulent, calumnious, and wicked ; 
founded on errors of law and fact, and conse- 


V 


PERCIVAVS STORY. 357 

quentlyofno force or effect; and that neither 
Jeanne nor her family had incurred any disgrace 
thereby, but were fully absolved from all blame. 

The decision was to be published by special 
procession at Rouen, and in every town in the 
kingdom. And a cross was erected on the 
place where she was burnt. 

Two years afterwards the venerable mother, 
Isabelle Rom^e, died. 

The homage of France to the Maid, has blos- 
somed out in crosses and monuments, statues, 
and pictures, and tapestries. 

In England the reversal of her sentence has 
not yet come. 

She is still regarded generally, and may be, 
perhaps, for centuries, as a sorceress and a 
heretic. 

But here also the day of acquittal and of 
clearing of the good and holy memory will 
come. 

And meantime, being where we believe she 
is, the Maid can well endure to wait. 


THE END. 



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